[ipython]

The problem is that people who contract COVID-19 don’t just wake up one morning and die. They tend to develop serious symptoms which, if presented at hospital, result in potentially prolonged care over a week or more involving the use of rare icu beds and (currently) rare and expensive ventilators.

If you can convince the population to take your stance “for the good of the economy!” then have the decency to also inform them not to seek treatment and therefore not overload the health care system for those who wish to live.

[xenocratus]

I'm not sure you understand that my point is that this is a compromise between dwo plights that cannot be resolved by armchair economists and epidemiologists. Sure, Bolsanaro might be wrong, but there are leaders out there who have to make a decision about which of the two options would affect their countries more. Simply defaulting to "just quarantine EVERYONE" might be correct from an epidemics perspective, but people don't only die or suffer from diseases.

So just keep an open mind.

[dirtyid]

It's extremely conceivable to me that the conditions of developing countries means quarantine is one of those "cure is worse than the disease" scenarios. Their fate is already written based on the resources they can muster, and when many countries GDP is dramatically less than the healthcare spending of developed countries, that's not much. It's counter-intuitive to pretend otherwise. Rich countries have the luxury of saying "you can't work if you're dead", when the ground reality in poor countries is "you're dead if you can't work. The demographic pyramid of poor countries with disproportionate youth is more resilient against COVID than the Spanish Flu that targeted the young - they're in a favourable position to get through the pandemic milder interventions.

[ipython]

Ah, the classic false dilemma logical fallacy.

There are more than two ways to address this problem. I am not an epidemiologist but I did watch a 3blue1brown video on YouTube last night. As I understand it, one of the most effective containment strategies is to test everyone, then take anyone who is infected as well as recent contacts of that person and ask them to self-isolate.

Imagine if we had rapid-result test kits that were deployed at all central choke point locations (say supermarkets, doctors offices, etc). If you needed food, you would have a test and the test would determine whether you contracted the disease. If the test was positive, you would have to submit your recent activities and contacts (perhaps aided by technology, such as tracking phone records or an app that tracks nearby bluetooth). The sick people would be placed into isolation and the contacts would be asked to quarantine.

What I see is a lack of foresight and innovative thinking from the very leaders we are seeking advice from. They're just giving us lazy answers that serve their own agenda. It's disgusting. We could have had effective testing in the US by now - we have made a conscious choice (probably out of inaction) not to develop them.

[mantas]

Thing is, we don't have rapid tests to test presence of virus. Only to test antibodies. And even those take sometime and would create a bottleneck.

Face masks for everybody is best so far. In case you're infected and didn't notice that yet (or asymptomatic at all), you don't spread it.

Problem with "test everyone" is that by the time you test the last person, you can't be sure that the first person didn't caught it. And then you have a good chunk of false-negatives.

[ipython]

My points still stand:

1. there are more than two options available to leaders (false dilemma)

2. there is a lack of true leadership and innovative thinking by our elected officials

3. you can't point to the side effect of the current strategy ("look at the economy!") and hand-wave away the side effect of another (lack of hospital resources to handle a peak infected load, causing even more suffering, loss of life, and public panic, most likely also affecting the economy)

The fact that I can't come up with a more effective solution as a layman in five minutes on an Internet comment board should not indicate that there are none.

[mantas]

In other words, you don't like either of existing solutions, don't know any better solutions and you're pissed off that people can't come up with better solutions.

That's not exactly a productive stance TBH.

[ipython]

I'm sorry if you felt that I was arguing against you- I think your suggestion of encouraging mask use is a great one! But nobody has done that, in fact, they've suggested the opposite (since there is a scarcity of 75c masks - so that masks are available for first responders and medical personnel, last I heard)

You are strawmanning my argument. My argument is, yes, I believe that there are more than two possible solutions to this. I also argue that the "do nothing" solution has its own downsides. If, however, you force me to choose from the two solutions presented (social isolation, or do nothing)- I pick social isolation because I believe, at least in the US, a good balance between flattening the spread and economic impact.

Yes I'm pissed off, why aren't you? I don't accept mediocrity from my coworkers or direct reports; why would you accept it from your government?

I feel like we're all experiencing mass learned helplessness at this point! We need to demand more from our leaders, not less!