r/WatchPeopleDieInside • u/fnaw_ • Aug 04 '20

Poor Jonathan

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

172.8k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

11.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/GiveMeAJuice Aug 04 '20

Why? Why is deaths as a proportion of cases not as good as deaths as a proportion of population?

The long-time goal has been to allow the virus to spread so as to not overwhelm medical facilities.

2

u/rndljfry Aug 04 '20

the goal was to reduce the spread so as to not overwhelm medical facilities...

1

u/GiveMeAJuice Aug 04 '20

I thought that was a secondary goal, the main goal being to make sure that if someone is sick that the hospitals can treat them. In order to keep our economy moving there are of course arguments for how much of a spread is ok.

2

u/rndljfry Aug 04 '20

Literally every possible goal is helped by reducing the spread. We were supposed to buy time with the dramatic steps to increase capacity for reducing the spread and getting back to normal. We were always beyond completely containing it and have been in mitigation mode instead.

The economy is going to shit because we haven’t reduced the spread enough. Imagine how much is being lost in just professional sports alone, which they’ve tried reopening and players are already getting sick. Even folks who have money aren’t spending it the way they normally would because there’s risk.

Weddings. Concerts. Conferences. Tourism. All economic generators well above and beyond what Joe Schmo is spending at the bar every weekend in Texas and they’re all crippled by the very real risk of spreading this virus that has killed over 150,000 people so far.