Comments by "dixon pinfold" (@dixonpinfold2582) on "Channel 4 News"
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It strikes me that the goal of flattening the curve is probably at odds with avoiding the impoverishment of us all, perhaps for no payoff whatever in lives saved. Lives may be at first be saved by slowing an otherwise uncontrolled spread, but slowing the spread roughly means shutting down the country until most people are vaccinated or have caught the virus and recovered. Pausing the economy for a full year or longer (the mayor of New York now says the shutdown there will last into next year) would likely be a disaster in many ways worse than letting the disease run its course whilst the sick and the old are safely hunkered down for several months.
And drawing out the spread over time is not guaranteed to save a great many lives anyway, as hospitals may be overwhelmed even by a relative trickle of patients: it's clear that they can't handle an influx of the sick amounting to 5% of the population, but what makes anyone think they could handle even 0.5%? Hospitals will no doubt rise to the occasion in astonishing ways, but they operate within realistic limits against which there is ultimately no remedy.
Thus the best way to save the most vulnerable might be to focus on isolating them in the most thoroughgoing manner possible, a task more achievable if people are working at their jobs and circulating freely, maintaining the normal functioning of things needed to support such an effort. To isolate those most at risk for, say, half a year is not only much easier on them and all of us than doing so for twelve months or more---it also gives the virus much less time to get through to them.
Imagine on the one hand emerging from the summer with herd immunity achieved at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and with a quick economic and social recovery at hand.
Contrast this with, on the other hand, having the disease hanging over us all for a year or longer whilst it slowly but inexorably picks off the vulnerable one by one, at the cost of a similar---or greater---number of lives and also an economic and financial hole so deep that it takes several years or a decade to climb out of it.
All the while we would swing back and forth agonizingly between tantalizing reprieve and resurgent outbreaks which continue through 2021. Quality of life and standards of living, obviously, but also the health of the people in all other respects would be sure to be seriously impacted. Do we know whether society could hang together throughout all that? We are most certainly (we in the anglosphere nations at least) not the same people who withstood the Second World War with such stoic resilience.
And what if the net effect of an unnecessarily protracted struggle against the disease is a sudden massive transfer of political and economic power to China?
The UK national science advisor may have been right to float the herd immunity idea. The country which gets through this soonest will enjoy an enormous feeling of gladness and will also be the envy of the world. Possibly it could mean considering how many lives we permit (or cause) to be ruined in favour of the uncertain chance of saving a single one. Possibly it could mean sacrificing a certain number of younger lives for a vastly greater number of older ones.
As Orwell said, "It is disagreeable to weigh human lives like groceries", but in the worst circumstances that may be precisely what is wisest.
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George V Thanks for your reply. Call it speculation if you like, but it's university scientists, health agencies, and heads of state who are predicting 40 to 80% infection rates, and I mean they've done it this week. Actually I think I stopped hearing 40% last week.
As for the 0.5% to 3.4% fatality rates, South Korea, which is now a rich country on a par with Japan, is the only one so far to achieve 0.5%, and that was only through an extremely focused effort, making all the right moves, and massive unity.
Let's face it, the US, with all its impressive strengths, is much more unruly and socially untidy, with huge swathes of poverty, ignorance, and disorganization (crime, drugs, etc.) that South Korea actually doesn't have.
People in LA are lining up around the block to panic-buy guns. I saw the footage.
I'm a foreigner, so you know your countrymen and I basically observe them through the telescope of exported TV and Internet. Cheers and good luck (your majesty lol).
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@cathygr "They do it on purpose. Channel 4, Sky news ... desperate ... to use such tactics."
Yes, yes, and yes. Blame it on the 90s, when the culture went all-out to teach us that playing fair was for losers and 'wimps'.
And who put on that show? The Me Generation, born between 1945 and 1964.
The disappearance of integrity, manners, and any charm in social life are all part of what I call The Collapse of Character, the result of The Great Slackening. Coming next, the disappearance of prosperity, security, and freedom. Thanks, baby boomers.
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