[ExI] (no subject)

[Keith Henson]

Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com> wrote:

snip

> You don't decrease the total number of people that will get sick, you just
decrease the number of people that will be sick at any one time.
It makes it easier on the hospitals, and fewer people die because the
hospitals can handle fewer sick people at one time.  But it stretches out
the pain much longer, before we achieve herd immunity.

That's true if we never get a vaccine.  And if humans can achieve herd
immunity.to this one at all.

> I'm sure many people making decisions in Sweden understood all this very
clearly and intentionally.

They might have.  If they did, they figured out that most of the
people who would die were older ones who may be important to family
members bur are more of a drag on the economy than anything else.  Had
COVID been known to not bother the old and kill the young and
productive, I expect they would have made a different decision.

> Clark, what was it you were saying about how bad off Sweden is because it
was doing so little?

That's not exactly true.  There was not a lot of government direction,
but the behavior of the people particularly the older ones changed a
lot.

> (yes, I expect you to eat your words ;)

I would wait a while on this, maybe even a year or longer.
Historically the 1918 flu came around twice and the second round was
worse than the first.  It may take years to sort out what strategy
works best.  They are still doing that for the 1918 flu.

You might also consider that it would not take a lot of mutation for
the current COVID to match the 70% death rate of MERS.

Even with the relatively low death rate, it would not surprise me that
much for this year to be the peak human population.

Keith