If CV turns out to be less deadly than flu...

[TheDailyCarbuncle]

do you think you will still feel the restrictions were worth it?

Just asking out of curiosity really.

You've just pulling entirely fictional figures out of your ass now, op.

The fact that makeshift hospitals are being put up tells you that the circumstances are different. Or is that just a conspiracy

Op the death rate isn’t fixed

What would it be if we did nothing?

Do you honestly think whole countries would close down and their economies go into freefall for flu?

I don't get how you don't get this question?

I don't think we should do nothing. I think we should test, both for illness and for immunity, and isolate areas of infection.

You're raising a moot point. We don't know, and therefore it's better to err on the side of caution. If we find out it is less deadly than flu, well, fantastic: we can then do things differently in future. The past, by then, will be irrelevant simply because we can do absolutely fucking nothing about it.

I'm actually really relieved at the response to this thread. Because people will still believe they did the right thing. Which is great.

The restrictions are to stop the health service being overwhelmed as this virus appears to be much more contagious than flu and there is no vaccine available. Also you can quote annual deaths from flu but we only have a minute amount of information re the deaths from coronavirus from a relatively short period of time. No one knows for certain the death rate from coronavirus.

Personally I would rather err on the side of caution and stay in for a few weeks/months to keep our elderly and vulnerable safe and save the NHS from disintegrating. It will cost the economy certainly but hopefully it will recover eventually.

If there are a lot of asymptomatic cases then observed transmission will go down faster than predicted and we will come out of this earlier than predicted.

At the moment it is quite clear, from what is actually happening in Spain and Italy, that the NHS could not cope if unrestrained transmission is allowed. So we have to accept a period of restrictions to reduce transmission.

This will generate actual data which can be fed into models to allow new predictions to be made. We can't just say "its impossible to predict what will happen so let's do nothing" because we have actual data from places that are ahead of us on the curve which says that would be foolish. Germany seems to be on a different curve, but nobody seems to know why. It would not be sensible to assume we will follow their curve just because it seems nicer.

Testing what we're trying to ramp up the ability to do now, so I don't see why you consider your suggestion some radical deviation from the plan. Well done on pointing out the obvious I suppose!

When the suicides, deaths from other illnesses, abuse cases, job losses and consequent lowering of living standards and all that come out fully, people will still feel ok about it all.

Your plan starts with mass testing, when that becomes possible a lot more options will open up to us.

If fewer people die than expected, then it'll be because of all of the measures that we've put in place.

Yes.

The obvious @esjee, is that testing should have started weeks ago.

@TheDailyCarbuncle I'm glad you're (patronix?zingly) relieved. Maybe you can rest easy now and stop asking about it.

Every expert and indeed very doctor treating it on the frontline is at pains to state this is not the flu. Not in terms of infection rate, not in terms of effects, not in terms of mortality rate. If literally every expert I have heard interviewed says it is worse, and so many govts believe them, you'll forgive me for also giving them some credit. Only yesterday I heard a doctor from NY saying that flu doesn't fill up ICU with so many thirty somethings.

Also, you will never know the counter factual. You will never know how many would have died without the restrictions. I agree though, the damage caused by the restrictions is incredibly serious. I am very worried about it.

I'm really surprised at how accepting people are of the narrative of 'protecting the healthcare system.' What if this were a natural disaster or a nuclear meltdown? Would you accept 'we can't deal with this you all have to suffer' as a response?

@TheDailyCarbuncle this debate is too boring for words.

I also don't think people realise that by staying home now they might prevent themselves/a loved one from getting it, but they or their loved one might still get it in October or in Feb 2021 or in January 2035

THEN LEAVE @esjee. I am not making you stay. If you think people dying from abuse and neglect is boring, so be it.

OP have you seen the pictures of hospitals in Italy and Spain and China? despite Italy having massively incresed their beds and 2 weeks leading up to the peak of infections

Do we have hospitals overwhelmed like this because of flu? No because it doesn't all happen at once and vaccines mean some people dob't get it when they would have if not immunised.

IT IS NOT JUST ABOUT THE MORTALITY RATE (though that is of course part of it) , it is about the sheer number of people being infected in a short period of time. So no, I'll be very very happy if the mortality rate ends up being very low because this virus is going to be with us a while so the lower the mortality rate, the mooe of us left who can hopefully get back to normal once the initial few surges of infections are over

Ofgs, people die of otherwise treatable trauma all the time when healthcare systems become overwhelmed in natural disasters. Are you being deliberately dense for sport?

they or their loved one might still get it in October or in Feb 2021 or in January 2035

Yes but hopefully by then we will have antiviral treatments or a vaccine