What do you think about "Can just slow the spread" notion? (i.e., will ultimately kill same number) [View all]

[pat_k]

What do you think about the notion that we "can just slow the spread."

The notion means that, ultimately, COVID-19 will kill the same number of people -- we just need to slow the rate of death so hospitals can cope.

This strikes me as an utterly bullshit excuse to implement less aggressive, less expensive efforts based on cost/benefit -- with the benefit side of the equation much reduced. The benefit of containment -- saving lives -- is out the window. This changes to "whatever we do, a vast majority will get infected anyway, and will ultimately kill the same number of people, so there is no real benefit to aggressive efforts to contain.)

Furthermore, the experience of China would indicate the the notion is utter bullshit. The total active and recovered is 143,000 or so. Unless my math is wrong, that's just a little over .01 percent of 1385 billion . Many areas in China are apparently far less affected. The spread is slowing. Do you really believe there are actually over 7000 times the number of "undiagnosed" cases there?

I don't buy it for a second.

We must undertake extremely aggressive efforts to CONTAIN, not just SLOW.

(And, with Merkel buying the "can only slow" notion, if I lived in Europe, I'd be a little concerned about spread from Germany due to moderated response.)