[eloff]

First off, ~12% of hospitalizations here in Canada are people under 40. It's not a laughing matter even for the young and healthy. Secondly it's causing severe damage to your body which could manifest as permanent damage, or just as having expended some of your limited capacity for self repair, leading to earlier failure in old age. Nothing is for free.

If you're deliberately getting people infected for herd immunity, you actually speed up the spread to all manner of people, including the most vulnerable. And you make the burden on the limited health system all the more acute causing additional unnecessary loss of life. Remember you need something like 50-80% of people infected to achieve herd immunity. Just doing the math on that and the burden to the medical system - it's not pretty.

I've given this some thought, but I think it's a horrible idea.

[pjkundert]

In addition, remember that we’re effectively testing nobody. The only young people seen in hospital with Covid-19 are probably the “tip of the iceberg” — this is the tiny portion that has serious issues. What is says is: there are 10x? 100x as many with Covid-19, exhibiting minor symptoms. Which may be a blessing in disguise.

I think, when we finally see any statistcally significant sampling including antibody tests, we may be pleasantly surprised at our progress toward herd immunity.

We have no good information presently.

[_yid9]

Then, we’re “flattening the curve”, infecting old and infirm people for 6 months, until a vaccine is ready.

That’s the plan.

That’s a bad plan.

[greedo]

There's not going to be a good plan. The good plan set sail in early January when we didn't consider SARS-CoV-2 a serious concern. So now we're choosing between flattening the curve to mitigate the overall death toll, or ignoring the moral cost and having 2.5m Americans die. I'm pretty sure where I stand on this.

And a vaccine won't be ready in 6 months. 12-18 is more like it, though we might be lucky and stumble upon a treatment to the disease itself.