> There are still lots of people under 50 getting it.
Getting it perhaps, but only 0.8% of deaths in Italy were under 50. [1]
[1] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...
We can't make intelligent decisions without knowing them.
Headline: "COVID-19: Millennials can and are falling seriously sick from coronavirus, says new data"
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-millennials-can...
100M people in the US had high blood pressure in 2018. The population was 328M. That's nearly 1/3rd of us having just one of these "serious medical conditions".
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/05/01/more-than-100-milli...
I don't think anyone is trying to say this is an overreaction. On the contrary, if you or any of your loved ones have a condition, you should be extra careful.
At the end of the report linked by other commenters (https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...) it also says that the few <40yo people who died also had existing preconditions.
This would be the opposite of normal thinking, which is to vaccinate the healthy people so that the unhealthiest don't have to get vaccinated, since any vaccine has some small chance of being problematic if you've already got issues. But, in this case, if we cannot produce enough vaccine fast enough, it could be that targeting those most at risk would be the right call.
If these shutdowns continue for too long, we'll be facing a bigger economic disaster than the great depression. People will turn into animals.
In contrast to that, if everybody above 70 somehow died immediately, it would be a major relief, economically speaking.
If you put two and two together, if this goes on for too long, there will be no more "civil society". You may think #boomerremover is a cruel joke. I think it's quite serious.
We need to discard the destructive idea that isolating some subpopulation is a viable strategy in this epidemic. There's no place to isolate people but their homes, essentially. You either isolate everyone or you're going effectively no one.
In contrast to that, if everybody above 70 somehow died immediately, it would be a major relief, economically speaking.
Yeah, these are the deluded and despicable ideas going around. No, the economic cost of dealing with the massive death of any group would be huge.
Why? Tell me how long are you going to isolate everyone? Years? COVID-19 isn't disappearing after a month or two. It can flare up again.
> There's no place to isolate people but their homes, essentially. You either isolate everyone or you're going effectively no one.
This is a false dichotomy. You need to build herd immunity in the long run, otherwise you will have to isolate everyone indefinitely to prevent it from spreading again.
Of course herd immunity can be achieved by a vaccine, but a "generally considered safe" vaccine will likely take at least a year to materialize and then it is unclear how many people actually want to get it.
The idea that "it's just a flu" is still attractive in people's heads. People aren't good at estimating personal risk.
> Yeah, these are the deluded and despicable ideas going around. No, the economic cost of dealing with the massive death of any group would be huge.
Facts aren't "deluded or despicable". I'm just pointing it out. People over 70 generally are not economically productive, but they do cost a lot in terms of health care and social security, a lot of which is unfunded liabilities. Of course that's an uncomfortable fact, but that doesn't make it any less true.
Today this might be something that people are not comfortable pointing out, of course the ruling elite are essentially senior citizens. At some point though, the pitchforks are going to come out. That's what I'm warning you about.
I'll point out another fact: During the plague, Jews were big creditors. You can read up on what happened to them. If a crisis meets opportunity, morals go out the window. Count on it.
We don't have any proof that would Covids flair up again if it was suppressed. China and South Korea have surveillance that has allowed them to catch Covids cases coming from abroad and eliminate home grown cases. This is simply not the flu.
The idea that "it's just a flu" is still attractive in people's heads. People aren't good at estimating personal risk.
Me: Yeah, these are the deluded and despicable ideas going around. No, the economic cost of dealing with the massive death of any group would be huge.*
I'm just pointing it out. People over 70 generally are not economically productive, but they do cost a lot in terms of health care and social security, a lot of which is unfunded liabilities.
It doesn't matter if someone is economically productive, their death can still be extremely expensive. If enough people die together and there aren't people to remove the bodies, the cost in lost economic activity and other diseases is pretty bad.
Also, letting the disease run rampant will not result in everybody above 70 somehow dying immediately, it will result in millions of people of all ages dying. The disease is NOT exclusive to old people, and a collapsing medical system will kill far more people than just the elderly.
Compared to this, the risk to the economy, especially going by current measures (not Wuhan-style locked-in-your-home quarantine) is minimal.
> Also, letting the disease run rampant will not result in everybody above 70 somehow dying immediately, it will result in millions of people of all ages dying.
It's a simplification, obviously. People who have a severe infection and who are not treated will die pretty much immediately, however. In Italy, where the system already collapsed and no effective treatment is possible, the vast majority is over 70, younger cases else are outliers.
Of course some younger people will also die. The "people of all ages will die" narrative is important to keep people's attention up - but it's not going to work in the long run. The younger you are, the less likely you are to die, that's a fact. The younger you are, the less risk averse you, that's another fact.
> Compared to this, the risk to the economy, especially going by current measures (not Wuhan-style locked-in-your-home quarantine) is minimal.
That entirely depends on how long these measures are in place.