Talking about herd immunity at this stage is nonsense.
Herd immunity is a natural path that takes years with help of Vaccines. Anyone who talks about herd immunity at this stage basically proposes to artificially infect their own population. You can't rush herd immunity and flatten the curve at the same time.
Yup and it's driving me nuts in general. I understand people are afraid, and don't know how they will survive potentially months of lock down but the failure to grasp how much more catastrophic going for a speed run of head immunity would be is mind boggling.
So many of the people, even within this thread, are quoting around a 2-3% death rate for that which is the rumored death rate for the virus in general.
I've seen time and time again people are bad at math they can't understand a very basic exponential curve, but is it really that hard to grasp that if we overwhelm the hospitals not only will people with the coronavirus not be able to get the treatment they need, but neither will anyone else? If we attempted to speed run the virus we would be looking at losing 10-15% of the population over a 3-6 month period. That would completely an utterly destroy the economy with no way for the government to be able to step in and help.
Our choices right now are between a terrible option and a catastrophic option and I really wish people would stop looking at the catastrophic option and going "well... maybe." especially since we don't know if we will be able to stay immune after getting it. If the virus mutates or if it's possible to be reinfected in general all speed running it would do is create a massive amount of deaths before we started round two.
We also won't be in complete lock down for a year. There is a chance that the summer does slow the virus, but beyond that as we get treatments and better tests we can more easily move towards properly testing people, quarantining them and those they came in contact with, and treating them as we somewhat reopen things.
Again I understand people are afraid, but I beg you, please stop and actually think about what you are saying if you are suggesting to just open everything back up in two weeks. How you are asking countless more people to die in an act that will only further destabilize the world economy. Give up on society returning right back to how it was before the virus spread, it isn't happening any time soon. It's here, and we have to deal with it. Just ignoring it and attempting to go back to how it was will only cause more problems.
Instead take that fear and frustration and direct it towards the politicians that should be helping us. The politicians that in America are stalling out needed aid because they keep trying to shove stuff unrelated to the bill to aid people in there, or who are trying to get blank checks to fund their own companies/the companies that donated to them instead of setting up something that is transparent and helps all. Humanity as a whole has always been able to adapt, and we can and will adapt to this situation.
