[mattigames]

A lot of those terrified people did indeed die; exactly 1 every 4000 people (in the US), plus a lot more will die in the following months, not to mention the ones that "recover" but thanks to permanent damage to their lungs and other organs will die in the next few years due complications from it, so please let's not talk like those fears are unfounded.

[mikem170]

1 in 4000 is not a lot, as deadly pandemics go.

I'm not aware of numbers on permanent lung damage. Too much of the news seems to be fear-mongering anecdotes when we could really use all the objective facts we can get.

[mattigames]

Permanent damage will only be calculated months or years from now, because x-rays and every other machine to investigate that has a slightly more important job right now, so any decision will probably have to be taken before we get the "objective facts" you want.

You can call it fear mongering or whatever you want but the statistics show 1.3% death rate of infected in the us[0], meaning approx. 1 every 100 people with the virus is dying, and the white house estimates a max of 240.000 deaths before this ends[1], you could still say 1 every 2000 is not a lot, and then you may realize how important any number of deaths is its completely subjective based on your own perceived value of human lives, maybe even 3999 deaths every 4000 is not much for some people because logically speaking the surviving people can repopulate the planet, and maybe in such case we should be really worried about not injecting any fear mongering into that 1 person that will survive.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/31/coronavirus-...

[mikem170]

The news is full of scary anecdotes, because that gets clicks. People are rightfully starved for information, the data is fuzzy, incomplete, and complicated, the situation is unusual, has evolved, became politicized unfortunately, etc.

I'd like to think you and I could agree in general to a broad set of known facts, and certain ranges of predictions, a set of possible outcomes, etc. But I think we'd still disagree on how to proceed! That's the part I'm curious to talk about. I don't mean to be argumentative with any of this or quibble over details, just trying to share my line of thinking, and curious about yours.

I can agree with the predicted 240k deaths in the U.S. you quoted, I guess that would be about 1 in 1375 people in a country of 330 million. I end up comparing those odds to the 863 of every 100k people how in any given year [1], which is 1 in 115, or almost 12 in 1375. These numbers vary by age, but the averages serve as decent enough discussion points when we talk about a large population in aggregate, which is how I look at this.

I'd feel differently if it were easier/possible to save those 1 in 1375 people who will die from covid, but it's not. The lockdowns were successful keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed (something I supported), but there is zero indication that we can stop this with lockdowns, quarantines, or contact tracing at this point. There are too many infected people. The odds are that there will not be a vaccine for many years, either.

Experts say that the most likely outcomes are that this virus decreases in severity to become another variant of the common cold, or comes up occasionally making for something like a bad flu year [3]

I feel bad for the tens of millions of folks in the U.S. negatively impacted by the lockdowns, especially without evidence supporting that lockdowns will make a long term difference if hospitals are not overwhelmed. I'm afraid the economic price to pay is going to be terrible for so many people, so many lives turned upside down, that the economy is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Look what happened after the 2008 recession, the protests, the ascendency of right wing national politicians, civil wars in the middle east, etc. This looks like it could be worse. I feel horrible about the added debt being passed to the younger generation for this stuff, why should they pay with a lower standard of living because collectively we can't save for a rainy day?

At this point it seems best to me to support hospitals and what we know works, including helping the vulnerable self-isolate. I don't think it's justified to force unwilling people into lockdowns unless hospitals are becoming overwhelmed.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm [2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_Worktable23r.... [3] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

[mattigames]

So many falsehoods and dubious claims in your comments for someone claiming to be basing his opinion on facts: China already injected 100 people with a vaccine under a trial[0], Oxford will soon inject 10000, both said it will take months to know if the vaccine truly worked as intended but is nothing like your claim of "years".

> "[is not] possible to save those 1 in 1375 people who will die from covid"

You know which day of the week surgeries are most successful? Monday, can you guess why that is? Is because surgeons are most relaxed after a weekend and are fully rested and ready to fully focus on the procedure at hand, that should give you a small glimpse to the giant difference between treating 100 people one week and treating 1 person per week in the course of 100 weeks; in simpler words: The less people are in the hospital the more likely the ones there will receive plentiful care and monitoring, understanding that isn't rocket science.

[0] https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-vaccine-adenovirus-c...

[1] https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/22/coronavirus-more-than-10...

[mikem170]

What specified falsehoods and dubious claims did you find in my comment?

They oxford trails may fail because they can't find enough infected people, our of 10k volunteers they are worried they might not have 50 infected people, less than 20 and the trial is a failure [1]. The numbers show that this is disappearing, at least this wave.

>The less people are in the hospital the more likely the ones there will receive plentiful care and monitoring, understanding that isn't rocket science.

Are you justifying leaving 40 million Americans unemployed, their lives up in the air, based on the supposed marginal differences between Monday and non-Monday surgeries? Don't you worry about the damage the lockdowns are causing? Do we burden younger generations with more debt and a lower future standard of living when the hospitals are not overcrowded?

I stated my line of thinking, why I went from being scared of the virus in March to being more scared of the damage from the lockdowns by the end of April.

What is your line of thinking? Do you worry about the damage the lockdowns are causing? Do you think the lockdowns are working to eliminate the virus? When do you think is a good time to stop the lockdowns? Do you think it's fair to lockdown people who don't feel the way you do?

I'm genuinely curious about why you think the way you do.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-24/oxford-un...