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Comment by mantap | Hacker News Reader

The corollary of this is that you don't even have to be infected with the coronavirus to die because of it. This coronavirus acts as figurative denial of service attack against hospitals. Anybody with a medical emergency is going to have an incresed risk of mortality if hospitals are swamped with an epidemic.

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This is actually a fitting description.

It’s effectively a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) on the medical system.

There are a lot of old people in Wuhan and the province, that those that gets a heart attack or an old age ailment, where they normally would have been saved, will now die. This is a terribly tragic secondary effect.

I wonder if it would be better to get infected now (on purpose), while hospitals are not under heavy load yet. You probably have higher chance of survival now, comparing to many weeks from now. Also the virus might mutate and become more deadly, so having antibodies now would also help down the line.

Probably not, you'd still run a small risk of death, even if you are young and healthy and getting excellent treatment in a first world hospital -- not to mention exposing your loved ones (particularly elders) to infection.

The best approach is certainly self-isolation with sufficient food, then you have zero chance of becoming infected.

I'm not at that point yet in Europe. But if I lived in Singapore or Hong Kong I might start considering it.

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