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Comment by earthtourist | Hacker News Reader

We should all be very happy this is finally happening, even if it is a huge inconvenience.

The important thing to remember is that society definitely will return to normal. It's just a matter of time.

The math tells us that ~95% people will get through this with a week or two of downtime, rendering them immunized against this virus, and then they'll be right back to work.

These extreme measures are to ensure as many people as possible survive hospitalization. We're all saving lives by staying home.

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From what I've heard & read, we don't actually know that people are rendered immune — and even if they are, we don't know how long the immunity would last.

This seems iffy; I don't think the reports from last week that people in China and Japan who were sent home and then tested positive again have been really confirmed. Do we have new info on that? We should be seeing more instances in Europe if it's a real phenomenon.

Even if it turns out that immunity doesn't happen, I don't think it changes the reaction that we need at this moment. It will change our decisions going forward, of course.

Don’t know for China but there are couple sources and cases for Japan.

What I think a most plausible explanation is it takes time after symptoms disappear for our immune system to finish wiping out virus. Influenza also has that stretch, though only days long, not weeks.

There's also that little problem we get new versions of the flu virus every year, why isn't that going to happen with covid-19 now? It's got billions of hosts.

It is very likely that this will become an ongoing thing where we have to get shots every year.

From the way things are that's most the likely outcome. As this virus goes through the world people will build immunity for different strains.

Does the re-infection result from there being at least 2 distinct strains of COVID-19?

From what I've read, it seemed uncertain if it was a re-infection or the person simply hadn't fully recovered and their symptoms had resurged

It's not even a re- infection necessarily. Second test could have been a false negative.

> The math tells us that ~95% people will get through this with a week or two of downtime, rendering them immunized against this virus, and then they'll be right back to work.

I don't think this is right. 80% of people should get through this fine if they contract it, given numbers I read recently. The other 20% will have some level of big problems, and if too many of these happen in a given area, hospitals will be overwhelmed and more would die than otherwise.

Furthermore, from what I have read, there is no known long-term immunity to CoV, but maybe a 4-month window of some level of immunity.

Not exactly. Up to 20% of those tested thus far required hospitalization of some kind of another. This in no way means 20% of all infections will require hospitalization. But right now, we don't have great data, other than estimations, of how many people currently have been, or are, infected without being able to test everyone.

> Furthermore, from what I have read, there is no known long-term immunity to CoV, but maybe a 4-month window of some level of immunity.

Going to need a cite on that one ...

You can't get one. Not just won't, can't. What's the worldwide population of people who got Corona more than four months ago?

>The important thing to remember is that society definitely will return to normal. It's just a matter of time.

Many seniors will never leave their homes again.

I don't see why not. Unless they are literally within weeks of dying already, in which case they probably weren't leaving the house anyways.

100,000 people die of old age every day.

And I have to suspect that that way is way more pleasant than dying with COVID-19 symptoms.

That is not what the math says. Even if people do become immune, it takes much much longer for the disease to spread through the population at a rate that won't overwhelm healthcare capacity. There was some uncertainty about this until now, but a paper just came out from the team at Imperial, whose advice was informing the UK govt.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-ana...

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

You have to keep severe social distancing in place until there's a vaccine, or there are too many people to care for. Better just hope it's a worst-case scenario when they estimate 12-18 months for a vaccine.

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