[dkdk8283]

We will see a second wave of devastation in 6 months when foreclosures hit. We are fucked even if there isn’t a second infection uptick.

The handling of this situation is a perfect demonstration of how the current political system fails us.

Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument. The other half wants it to end so they can pay their bills.

People are going to die. It can’t be helped.

[ekidd]

> Half the people want lockdowns to continue and cite research papers supporting the argument.

I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed.

There are several states that are aiming for something like the South Korean solution: stay-at-home until the level of cases drops low enough that we can test mild symptoms, track contacts, and safely treat everyone who falls ill. This is literally the official proposal in my state, and we're relaxing the stay-at-home order now that the conditions are met.

I won't pretend that this proposal will be easy to execute. IIRC, Seoul just re-closed all its bars after an infected partier visited four bars that hadn't been following the social distancing rules.

As someone in my 40s, my risk of death is fairly low. But a substantial portion of hospitalized cases are younger people, and something like 30% of severe hospitalized cases are showing some loss of lung capacity, loss of kidney function, or micro-clotting with risk of stroke. I earn a living with my brain; stokes scare me.

So you can reopen the economy all you want, but I'm not setting foot in a restaurant, movie theater, airplane or barbershop until I'm vaccinated (or recovered). Whenever possible, I'll be buying from merchants who offer curbside pickup or delivery. And I've been trying to support local merchants as much possible, including takeout from several local restaurants.

[zelphirkalt]

> I don't think anybody who's thought about it for more than a few minutes wants the stay-at-home orders to continue indefinitely. I certainly don't, and it's not what my state has proposed.

Eh, well, I personally would like the lock down to finally actually happen.

Everyone prepare or get help to prepare and then actually have a lock down for 2-3 weeks and beat this virus. Instead we have this 1 friend meeting allowance and some non-essential businesses opening up or people acting incredibly selfish/stupid and doing parties, because they suffer oh so much from isolation.

These are things, that drag a semi-lockdown waaay out and make it actually bad for businesses. It would be half as bad, if not less, if people had discipline and we had acted with strong lock down initially or at any point since then.

I personally have not met with a single friend or person outside this household since the start of semi lock down here, with the exception of buying food, and do not plan to do so. I do not want to be the one responsible for bringing the virus into this household or giving it to anyone else. It might be easy for me as introverted or computer guy, but so what? Of course it will be harder for some other people! There are always differences. It's not like people could not survive 2-3 weeks actual lock down at home, when prepared properly and delivered food in emergency.

We could have a state organized food delivery service for emergency cases, where people did not prepare sufficiently. We could also have avoided people buying too much of certain goods by simply starting out with lock down + purchase per person limitations at the same time.

Another idea: Have a state supported fund for everyone who cannot work during lock down. Make it easy for the working from home population to support everyone else. Do not rely on private people organizing this themselves! I have yet to see the news announcement of there being some official place, organized by government, where I could donate part of my wage, so that people wgo cannot work currently due to the virus get some income. I have seen (and donated to) some private campaigns for gastronomy and similar, but not simply anything for trying to share wages.

The point is, that we need to get back to a point, where tracing all the infections is possible again, fast. Only then we should loosen restrictions. We could be there already, with a little discipline and more government support for helping people instead of relying on private actions.

("Here" is Germany in this case.)

[ekidd]

> Everyone prepare or get help to prepare and then actually have a lock down for 2-3 weeks and beat this virus.

I don't think it's quite that easy. Wuhan shut down on January 25th, and they were still seeing 500 new cases a day by the end of February. This was despite a very strict lockdown, and a serious effort to find and isolate all the mild cases until they got better. Something like 80% of transmission was within households. Nobody was going out to party. Once this thing gets started, it's a beast to stop, taking something like 5 to 8 weeks bring a major urban cluster mostly under control.

Our state has been lucky so far. We have about 1 new case per 100,000 people per day, and less than 2% of our tests are coming back positive. So we're preparing to move ahead with contact tracing and a staged reopening.

[zelphirkalt]

OK, I don't know how long it would really precisely take of course, given proper lock down. Maybe it's even longer than 3 weeks.

You say that 2% of the 100.000 tests come back positive.

Who can monitor 2000 people around the clock and track every single person they have any contact with? Honestly, where do such capacities come from? Or are people just told to stay at home and it goes unchecked, whether they actually do?

I imagine that to be very difficult to contact trace perfectly. Each infected person could infect many others, if not properly isolated. 2000 is still a lot to trace. If we were talking about 100 to 400 maybe or so, then I could imagine that being done.

[Izkata]

> Wuhan shut down on January 25th, and they were still seeing 500 new cases a day by the end of February.

Wuhan was still on lockdown until April - almost three months.

[dkdk8283]

Great, you have the money to do it. Avoid risk.

Humans have had a long successful streak without major devastation.

That’s now changed.

Being strong does matter. Being afraid in your palace doesn’t.

Funny how history repeats itself.