Comment by greedo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greedo | Hacker News Reader

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I know that math can be challenging for some, but I'll try to help you through this. Say we follow the Kundert Methodology. Intentionally get 100M people in the US sick in over 2-3 weeks. Of those, approximately 15% are requiring hospital care. 15M people. Guess how many hospital beds we have in the US? According to the American Hospital Association, we have roughly 900k beds. So 14.1M patients aren't treated. Not good. Leads to complications, and a higher fatality rate. Additionally, 5% of those infected require ICU. That's 5M patients. We don't have the capacity to handle 10% of those cases. Because we've crashed our medical system, 4.5M Americans just died.

So at the end of the day we have the following:

4.5M dead. 500k with long term health issues

And this ignores the fact that we wouldn't be able to keep at risk "and any scared people" in a safe isolation. Inevitably, a decent percentage of them would get infected and have worse results.

Yes, apparently math can be challenging. Healthy young people with no underlying health issues are at very low risk. South of .1% mortality.

The arguments given apply exactly to the presently executed plan, just over a year’s duration. During which time, 75% of businesses will be extinguished.

Good luck with that plan, hinging on keeping the elderly and those with health issues isolated for a year. I’m sort of sickened to imagine the horrific outcomes of the current plan to isolate millions of unprepared city-dwellers....

But, I guess that’s not our problem?

Healthy young people with no underlying health issues (kind of redundant). So sorry about those with diabetes. 33% of the US population (100M) had diabetes in 2017. So that's just too bad. How about obesity? According to the CDC, 40% of people age 20-39 are obese. Sucks to be them. Same with cancer patients, smokers, anyone with a compromised immune system.

Your plan is simply immoral. The facts show that it would lead to immense loss of life, while we can simultaneously help business stay afloat. And most economists agree that the economy should be a secondary consideration to the health battle.

Healthy young people with no underlying health issues are at very low risk of dying if they can get medical care. If we run out of hospital beds, ICU beds, and ventilators, the death rate climbs. If we run out of doctors and nurses to care for the hospitalized patients because they're all home sick with COVID-19, the death rate climbs. The death rate isn't a static feature of the disease, it's a function of how well we can care for the ill.

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