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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Looking at this in dispassionate economic terms...

It’s not clear to me that letting the virus run it’s coarse would hurt the economy.

Some (but certainly not most) very old people would die, but they are not in their productive years. Their assets would pass to younger people who would be more inclined to put them to use in the economy.

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This is how I see it too. We are not going to able to stop the virus, it's everywhere already. Shutting down the country may delay this a bit which is good for hospitals but terrible for everything else.

The difference in death toll would be minimal, but the difference in the economic recovery will be substantial.

Have you noticed that China has stopped it? And that new cases stopped growing in Italy? Unless you assume the US will be especially bad at handling the problem it seems like there is a solution - do what other countries did.

China is just lying about their numbers. Not sure you can call Italy a success just yet, their 3 biggest increases in new cases were the last 3 days.

> their 3 biggest increases in new cases were the last 3 days

As raw numbers but not percentages. 13% each of the past 3 days is better than the 15-25% (mostly nearer 25%) of the past few weeks.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

I dont think Italy is over the hump yet

Not everything is about dispassionate economics. In the "we do nothing" scenario, everyone with 150 friends loses 1-5 of them, and about as many will have decreased quality of life.

That is a huuuge emotional toll.

What's the death toll with the 'shut it all down' scenario? Not much better! It's already spreading uncontained everywhere. Shutting it all down will not stop all the deaths. Not even close.

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