I'm not sure it's even possible to produce enough tests at this point. The examples I've seen for how many tests we'd need to reopen mostly, with large gathering still banned but people freely able to move around, assumed we tested people every two weeks and centrally quarantined everyone infected. That would require billions of tests a year, and even South Korea has only performed 600,000 tests total. But they got on top of this a lot earlier than we did. That COVID-19 is asymptomatic for so long makes containing any outbreak extremely difficult, because by the time you find out one's happening, it's already spread.
Given the choice between "a lot of people I know have isolation-associated trauma" versus "a lot of the people I know are dead," one option is obviously preferable to the other?
True, but I'm thinking of PTSD and trauma across the entire population vs. not the entire population dying. I've heard stories of my friends waking up crying, having panic attacks, seen them lashing out at other people on social media, etc. There's a lot of online scolds that are saying, like, "Just stay inside and binge Netflix, you idiots!" and not realizing that it's not that simple and it is actually harmful to people.
Though as you say, watching friends and family die is also harmful to people, but that study from SARS quarantine was from only a few weeks. The people suggesting over a year of shelter in place don't understand how damaging it would be.
It would be a start if the plans to reopen at least had some provision where people over 60 or with serious health conditions could continue receiving government support after businesses reopen and jobs are available. As far as possible, it would be good to try to develop herd immunity using only the part of the "herd" in which most of the members are likely to survive...
Something like this is more like what I was thinking is the best plan when all plans are bad. There are people with no prior health conditions being hospitalized and dying, but the fatality rate in people in their 30s and younger is extremely low (though higher than the flu), and the risk of rare complications like strokes is even lower and might represent previously-undiagnosed rare health conditions, like the woman in Italy who is still infected after two months because her body doesn't produce coronavirus antibodies and she'd never been infected with one before, so she never had a reason to figure that out.
Which is what I meant about what is the point of this and how far should we go? If waiting for a vaccine isn't feasible, what is the point where we open up a bit? No one is really articulating an end goal--it seems to be either "any danger is too much, leaving your house is selfish" (like the mayor of Chicago), or "well, it's too late, let's give up" (the governor of Georgia). The point of the lockdown was to give us time to increase our hospital facilities, which happened in Illinois and we never came close to going too far, get more PPE and more testing capability. The federal government keeps seizing PPE shipments from people for poorly-explained reasons and testing isn't going to get up to where we need it to go. So, what do we do?
I don't actually have an answer, because any workable answer assume a competent federal government and we don't have that.
no subject
Given the choice between "a lot of people I know have isolation-associated trauma" versus "a lot of the people I know are dead," one option is obviously preferable to the other?
True, but I'm thinking of PTSD and trauma across the entire population vs. not the entire population dying. I've heard stories of my friends waking up crying, having panic attacks, seen them lashing out at other people on social media, etc. There's a lot of online scolds that are saying, like, "Just stay inside and binge Netflix, you idiots!" and not realizing that it's not that simple and it is actually harmful to people.
Though as you say, watching friends and family die is also harmful to people, but that study from SARS quarantine was from only a few weeks. The people suggesting over a year of shelter in place don't understand how damaging it would be.
It would be a start if the plans to reopen at least had some provision where people over 60 or with serious health conditions could continue receiving government support after businesses reopen and jobs are available. As far as possible, it would be good to try to develop herd immunity using only the part of the "herd" in which most of the members are likely to survive...
Something like this is more like what I was thinking is the best plan when all plans are bad. There are people with no prior health conditions being hospitalized and dying, but the fatality rate in people in their 30s and younger is extremely low (though higher than the flu), and the risk of rare complications like strokes is even lower and might represent previously-undiagnosed rare health conditions, like the woman in Italy who is still infected after two months because her body doesn't produce coronavirus antibodies and she'd never been infected with one before, so she never had a reason to figure that out.
Which is what I meant about what is the point of this and how far should we go? If waiting for a vaccine isn't feasible, what is the point where we open up a bit? No one is really articulating an end goal--it seems to be either "any danger is too much, leaving your house is selfish" (like the mayor of Chicago), or "well, it's too late, let's give up" (the governor of Georgia). The point of the lockdown was to give us time to increase our hospital facilities, which happened in Illinois and we never came close to going too far, get more PPE and more testing capability. The federal government keeps seizing PPE shipments from people for poorly-explained reasons and testing isn't going to get up to where we need it to go. So, what do we do?
I don't actually have an answer, because any workable answer assume a competent federal government and we don't have that.