[ExI] The USA is number one!

[Dave Sill]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 12:13 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> US deaths will likely total around ~60K based on current estimates.  While
> anyone personally impacted is the victim of a terrible tragedy, those
> numbers still add up to a bad flu season, like it or not, and we should be
> asking ourselves how much economic damage we are going to tolerate in
> flattening the curve, and how many liberties we are willing to lose.
>

Whatever the tally, it's likely lower than it would have been without the
shutdowns and social distancing. And lacking a crystal ball, how could we
know at the beginning the cost/benefit of various preventive actions? Flu
is a known quantity. We have vaccines. We know what it can do and we try to
minimize it. C-19 was an unknown--and still is, for the most part.

Once the healthcare system is better prepared to deal with this, we should
> be letting this thing burn itself out in the general population with those
> at highest risk taking more extraordinary steps to remain safe.
>

There are a LOT of lessons to be learned from this. Let's hope we learn
some of them.

Former list member Robin Hanson has been a big proponent of letting
volunteers catch C-19 under controlled circumstances and isolated until
they're recovered, like variolation was done for smallpox before there was
a vaccine. Having plans for that in place *before* an outbreak could save
many lives in the next pandemic.

-Dave
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