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by sarbaz 2253 days ago
One way to shorten the time is to constantly increase hospital capacity, so that in each month lets you infect more people. Especially if plasma donations turn out to work to reduce severe cases.

Another way is to separate young people from old people more effectively. Then you might be able to permit 1m young people to be infected each month with the same hospital budget we have today

2 comments

That's assuming that the only two outcomes of a SARS-2 infection are "dead" and "completely recovered". There are case reports of young and otherwise healthy adults who survived SARS-2, but where a CT shows the lung tissue mostly obliterated. Sure, they survive, but running a marathon or going on that diving vacation might be a sudden death sentence for them.
I hope we can get actual studies soon because the anecdata is scary to me. I hope these stories only make news because they are rare not just because it happens to be a celebrity:

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/...

And that is also one possible way into desaster. By the time anyone gets close to herd immunity, the virus has mutated over and over again.