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At a death rate of .1 — which is the average death rate of both the Stanford and USC studies in California and is the same death rate as the seasonal flu — even if every single person in the country was infected we’d see only 327k deaths, a fraction of the 2.2 million predicted.
But the reality is we would see far less infections than this and herd immunity would set in far before this. It seems to me that the best strategy going forward is for young & healthy people to go back to work. Most who get the disease will be completely fine.
Those who are elderly or have suppressed immune systems should continue to shelter & visits to nursing homes shouldn’t be allowed. Those of us working should limit our interaction with the elderly in near future. Tell me why this isn’t the best possible solution going forward.
Obviously everyone is opposed to death, but we have to balance public health and the economy. 2.8 million people die every year in this country, 7500 a day. We can’t lock up forever and wait for a year or more for a vaccine that may not ever arrive or work when it gets here.
These are the kinds of serious conversations media & politicians need to be having with the public. We are now starting to see what the worst case health scenario is from this virus. Now we have to balance that out with economic decisions & make smart(er) public policy choices.
