[ExI] shops opening

[John Clark]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:14 AM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> There's a new bug, *
>

Yes it's new, nobody has seen anything like it before so our knowledge of
it is slight. You keep assuming that things are really better than they
seem, well maybe so, but maybe things are worse than they seem.


>  > *The IFR is likely way lower than originally thought. *
>

And it's likely the virus is way more infectious than originally thought.

*> 1,580 people have died, and their economy for the most part is still
> open. *
>

Yes 1,580 people have died in Sweden, and the population of Sweden is 32
times smaller than the population of the USA. And Sweden's death numbers
double every 8 days. How long will that rate of doubling continue? Nobody
knows because as you say this is a new bug, and in Sweden's case there is
the complication that some think extreme cold slows the spread of the virus
and Sweden is currently very cold. Summer is coming.


> *> What is your end game here, John, if you were running the show?   *
>

If we'd acted aggressively very early in the pandemic as South Korea and
Japan did much of this nightmare could have been avoided, but it's too late
now. At this late date I have no magical end game solution that does not
involve a tragic amount of economic pain and human death, all we can do is
try to minimize it the best we can.


> *> There is a real possibility that there will not be an effective vaccine
> developed for t*his.
>

I'm not as pessimistic as you are. Given the fact that the virus doesn't
mutate much and most people form antibodies and recover I think it's very
unlikely that a vaccine can not be found, but if I'm wrong and a prevention
or an effective treatment turns out to be as difficult as with cancer then
we'd just have to accept a permanent and significant reduction of the human
lifespan and of our standard of living. But right now we're a hell of a
long way from that point of desperation.

John K Clark
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