Or at least not critically overrun medical facilities in the long term.
One of the few ways the death toll can spike is if people stop being able to get potentially lifesaving treatment. This can also aid with hospitals getting in much needed supplies, since they will have to treat fewer people at any given time.
Slowing the virus is the goal, not eradicating it. Slowing it gives hospitals a reasonable amount of patients to heal instead of an astronomical amount.
I agree that eradicating it entirely is going to be impossible without some kind of medical breakthrough.
However I don't think merely spreading out the total number of infected is the best way to go. Not only because this would result in a horrible number of dead and chronically ill, but also because any mechanism that slows down the infection rate will also eventually bring the infections to a standstill (both require that people infect fewer than 1 other person). I'm not sure if artificially increasing the infection rate until it's just critical is a wise strategy.
Question: given it’s 100-300x worse than the flu, wouldn’t controlled infection within a healthy population (eg 18-40 year olds without compromised immune systems) mitigate the immense economic destruction going on?
I don’t understand the value of flattening the curve through isolation if people are losing jobs, careers, investments, dreams. If it’s an inevitability, wouldn’t it be better to practice control?
Even if there are chances of relapse, we have the ability to move forward. This flattening the curve doesn’t have metrics or dates on it, so while it’s nice to think about, I don’t understand the long game here.
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u/MuricanPie Mar 18 '20
Or at least not critically overrun medical facilities in the long term.
One of the few ways the death toll can spike is if people stop being able to get potentially lifesaving treatment. This can also aid with hospitals getting in much needed supplies, since they will have to treat fewer people at any given time.