[mcguire]

Are you seriously suggesting we lock over 110,000,000 people (34% of the population) in close quarantine for the duration? How do you plan to feed them? Get them medical care (be sure you don't overwhelm the system with the under 50s that get sick)? Keep them from rioting against their captors?

What happens when you decide it's good enough and release them, and the residual infection sweeps through that population like wildfire?

[hammock]

>Are you seriously suggesting we lock over 110,000,000 people (34% of the population) in close quarantine for the duration?

As opposed to 100% of the population? It sounds like an improvement to me. I'm suggesting relaxing restrictions for a part of the population, not increasing them.

[xadhominemx]

Who is suggesting 100% of the population be under close quarantine? We haven’t seen anything like that since April.

[sfblah]

Bay area resident here. My kids can't go to school. I barely go to the store. Even going for a walk is tricky, as unless you take massive precautions (which I'm fine with, btw) everyone yells at you. I basically have no human contact outside my family, and it's been like this for six months. So, yeah, for me the situation couldn't really get much more quarantined.

[mcguire]

The Bay area sounds excessive, but consider that under the ancestor's idea, you couldn't do that if you were concerned with reducing your risk of infection.

I'm 53. I have asthma and I really hate hospitals. Right now, I have been going for groceries about once a week. I've gone to some appointments, but I've cancelled others. I've been getting take-out some, and I even went on one shopping expedition for craft supplies. I'm relatively comfortable with that because, while I have to assume everyone else is potentially infected, I can also assume that most of them are taking steps to protect me---a mask is significantly more effective at preventing spread from someone infected than it is at preventing an infection of the wearer.

Close quarantine means no going to the store at all. Not going for walks. It specifically means no human contact outside the people you are quarantined with.

[xadhominemx]

That doesn’t sound like close quarantine at all

[mcguire]

If you think 100% of the population of the United States is in quarantine now, I suggest you check the definition of quarantine.

If you relax "restrictions" on a part of the population, more of that population becomes infected. If you do not increase the restrictions on the remainder of the population, the higher prevalence increases the transmission rate in that remainder. And thus deaths.

I'm sorry if my existence is inconveniencing you.

[majormajor]

You would have to increase restrictions for the vulnerable group because if you allow them to mix at all (even at today's levels) with the "free spreading" group they are going to have much worse odds than they do today. Since you're intentionally trying to increase the proportion of sick people in the less-vulnerable group. People like the "grandma living with family with school age children" or the "30 year old immunocompromised cancer patient with a roommate" get fucked if all those people around them (and around them, etc) simply go back to normal and you don't more actively isolate them.

This might not be a terrible idea, though, if compared to a several-year-extension of what we have now... because over time, the cumulative probably of exposure for the vulnerable will just keep rising and rising if we stay at something like the status quo.

But... that's where things like vaccine and treatment development come in. If a vaccine makes catching it much less likely in 6 months, or treatment improvements make it much less deadly even for the vulnerable in six months, then it's worth spending another 6 months in the current situation.

[nradov]

No one is seriously suggesting we forcibly lock vulnerable people in close quarantine. Instead we should provide those at greatest risk with free hotel rooms if they want to quarantine on a voluntary basis.

[mcguire]

Where they would have to stay. For the duration. With minimal contact. If they don't want to take a significant chance of dying.