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Comment by AntonStratiev | Hacker News Reader

A significant portion of the population will be reduced to poverty, but at least we can keep as many elderly alive as possible.

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I think your point could be stated better but the sentiment behind is worth exploring. If the economy collapses there will certainly be an increase in misery, spousal and child abuse, suicides, and murders. This may be a time where hard choices need to be made. Maybe we really are confronted with a "lesser of two evils" type situation.

It's a false choice. Allowing a pandemic to run rampant would wreck the economy for a lot longer than an effective lockdown. Especially now that a lot of younger people are showing up in ICUs.

China is already done with the hard part. Lock down, get the virus under control, make a lot of test kits, and before long you can rely on mass screening, contract tracing, and targeted isolation, and get people back to work.

It may be a false choice now but it might not be a false one in the future. At any rate, it is worth exploring the idea and it’s an interesting question regarding the circumstances that must be present in order for it to longer be a false choice.

If hospitals are faced with a massive influx of people suffering from COVID-19 in ways that require hospitalization, what do you think happens to the rest of medical care?

If 20% of the population are simultaneously suffering from "a bad flu", what do you think happens to supply chains?

I think a lot of your downvoters will be reconsidering their positions after a few months of horrific economic effects. In my experience, people are much less altruistic when that altruism has a real, personal cost associated with it.

but at least we can keep as many elderly alive as possible

Your information is out of date.

Younger adults are large percentage of coronavirus hospitalizations in United States, according to new CDC data

White House officials warn millennials they are not immune

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/19/younger-adu...

> More than raw numbers, the percent of total cases gives a sense of the risk to different age groups. For instance, just 1.6% to 2.5% of 123 infected people 19 and under were admitted to hospitals; none needed intensive care and none has died… In contrast, no ICU admissions or deaths were reported among people younger than 20.

> In South Korea, for example, which had an early surge of cases, the death rate in Covid-19 patients ages 80 and over was 10.4%, compared to 5.35% in 70-somethings, 1.51% in patients 60 to 69, 0.37% in 50-somethings. Even lower rates were seen in younger people, dropping to zero in those 29 and younger.

"Immune" is not an accurate word but... "almost unaffected" is accurate. These are the most recent numbers. Warning millennials about risks is almost entirely to protect the old, not to protect themselves.

[source] https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/coronavirus-new-age-anal...

People keep pointing this out without addressing the compositional issue.

The % of people hospitalized within an age rage tells us nothing without the % of that age range infected.

To me, this statistic just means the young & old don't commingle much compared to Italy/China.

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