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by edoo 2271 days ago
Wrong. Flattening the curve merely delays infections and does not prevent them. It doesn't seem to work well either. It has been good for a 0.5 R-0 drop which points to other primary vectors instead of aerosols. Also it turns out if you need a ventilator you have a 95% death rate, so if the hospitals get overwhelmed the overall death toll won't be too different. If the death toll is anywhere near 100k total we trashed the economy over a bad flu. It would take 6+ months of isolation to beat the virus with quarantine measures, more than long enough to cause a wave of economic related deaths way higher than the virus. People have to get back to work.
1 comments

No, you are wrong by confusing number of cases with deaths. Flattening the curve reduces the max number of cases, which reduces hospital overload, which in tun saves lives. Without any intervention we were/are looking at 1M+ deaths:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coron...

That's a lot of people to condemn to death. Do you have statistics to cite for "Economic related deaths" that you quote?

1M+ deaths is impossible based on .gov's own numbers. Estmated 100-200k dead. The only way a hospital can help is with ventilators. Everyone else gets the exact same treatment at home or not. If we have a 90% death rate on ventilators than in an absolute worse case 'system overwhelmed' scenario there are 10% more deaths. The idea of millions is laughable, but to be expected from political opinion pieces.