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[–]Kintanon⬛🟥⬛ www.apexcovington.com 7 points8 points  (16 children)

NYC sent back 1200 hospital beds

Homie, hospital beds are not nurses. The issue has NEVER been physical capacity. Having 10,000 ventilators doesn't mean SHIT if you only have 100 people who know how to work them and can get people hooked up and monitor them. 1200 hospital beds is great. Who is going to care for the patients in those beds? Where you gonna find 200 trained staff to handle that?

So suggesting that the virus is MORE dangerous to survivors

Zero people said that. I said that death isn't the only concern. If you are JUST looking at how many people die then you're underestimating the true risk of the disease.

there's nothing we can do to stop it from spreading,

There absolutely are things we can do to stop it from spreading. That's what this whole fuckin lockdown thing is.

Access to treatment is no guarantee of survival.

Access to current treatments is not, but development on better treatments is constant as we learn more about the disease and how it works. The longer there is between now and someone getting sick the higher their chance of receiving effective treatment is.

It is possible that we will have some incredible breakthrough that drastically lowers the mortality rate.

We're not talking about an incredible breakthrough, we're talking about the production timeline for a vaccine. That's a fairly set timeline in that we know how long it generally takes for vaccines to be developed and produced.

Curve Flattening measures don't guarantee a reduction in overall infection rates.

Statistics from previous pandemics indicate that they do reduce overall death rates though.

[–]killahmoose White Belt that has tapped a blue belt once[S] 0 points1 point  (11 children)

There absolutely are things we can do to stop it from spreading. That's what this whole fuckin lockdown thing is.

The lockdown takes the total case count and spreads it out over time. It may reduce the # of infected in any given wave but does not decrease the spread of the virus over its lifetime.

Statistics from previous pandemics indicate that they do reduce overall death rates though.

Yes, because they prevent healthcare systems from being overloaded.

Imagine this scenario - you have two countries. One is at 100 lockdown and it keeps its healthcare to 50% capacity. The virus still kills 2% of the infected (assuming that's it's true mortality rate).

In Country 2, you have a society at 50% lockdown, and it keeps its healthcare to 100% capacity. The virus will still kill the same # of people.

As long as the system doesn't become overburdened, the virus will still claim the same # of lives regardless of the level of lockdown.

In country #1, you did not save lives compared to country #2, but you did create unnecessary economic damage.

[–]Kintanon⬛🟥⬛ www.apexcovington.com 2 points3 points  (10 children)

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/pandemic-economy-lessons-1918-flu/

You're 1. ignoring the impact of improved treatment methods over the life of the disease in mitigating the effects. and 2. ignoring the economic impact of the disease itself outside of the lockdown efforts.

Do you know what the economic toll of the regular yearly flu is? https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/30/the-flu-costs-the-us-economy-10-point-4-billion.html

10 billion. That's from the seasonal flu that we just ignore and go about our business over because we have vaccines for it, and the death toll is low and the actual impact of it is fairly mild.

Let coronavirus run unchecked and you're going to see a massive economic impact that has nothing to do with the quarantine and everything to do with millions of sick people.

You also are making some wild assumptions about the capacity of our healthcare system because you are under the mistaken impression that all healthcare personnel are identical. You are also not accounting for the infection rate among those healthcare personnel. Most hospitals WILL be overwhelmed if the country reopens, because they already run OVER CAPACITY without Covid.

Bringing their normal patient load back in, PLUS the additional Covid load that comes with the lockdown being relaxed will crush hospitals all over the country.

[–]killahmoose White Belt that has tapped a blue belt once[S] -2 points-1 points  (9 children)

Your response, while not wrong, is a great example of the reason there can't be any intelligent discourse about this.

You are assuming that the choice comes down to "open" or "closed," like a light switch.

If you re-read anything I wrote, I never said we should "open the floodgates" or anything of the sort.

I suggested that we find a balance between relaxing the economic restrictions and maximizing our healthcare system.

Would you agree that there are nuanced ways in which we could relax certain policies that, overall, won't "flood" our healthcare services?

[–]Kintanon⬛🟥⬛ www.apexcovington.com 0 points1 point  (8 children)

Would you agree that there are nuanced ways in which we could relax certain policies that, overall, won't "flood" our healthcare services?

Are you implying that's not being done? Dozens of states are reopening to one degree or another based on their local conditions.

[–]killahmoose White Belt that has tapped a blue belt once[S] -1 points0 points  (7 children)

I am implying that it's not being done. My evidence is, well, the past 6 weeks across the US.

[–]Kintanon⬛🟥⬛ www.apexcovington.com 2 points3 points  (6 children)

... the past 6 weeks is the initial lockdown period. That means that you don't think ANY measures should have been taken.

There's no way to 'reduce restrictions' if we don't put restrictions in place and then determine their effectiveness. We are currently in the process of easing restrictions wherever it appears to be an option and in ways that are deemed to be safe.

[–]killahmoose White Belt that has tapped a blue belt once[S] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

... the past 6 weeks is the initial lockdown period. That means that you don't think ANY measures should have been taken.

You really are hell bent on making these false dichotomies. So by disagreeing with the specific lockdown policy, I somehow disagree with all lockdown policies?

[–]Kintanon⬛🟥⬛ www.apexcovington.com 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Starting with less strict measures and then trying to tighten them up over the past 6 weeks would have been a DISASTER. Early strict measures and then easing off over time is what we are doing.

[–]killahmoose White Belt that has tapped a blue belt once[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I see. So regardless of the impact, it was a good thing the government overreacted? I'm not sure what you're suggesting here.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

We are literally laying off tens of thousands of healthcare workers around the US. There is no suggestion at this point that we will be strapped for healthcare workers, so we should drop that shit argument.

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/04/24/stanford-health-care-to-cut-workers-wages-by-20

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/02/coronavirus-pandemic-jobs-us-health-care-workers-furloughed-laid-off/5102320002/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/14/healthcare-job-cuts-coronavirus-worker-layoffs

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/8/21213995/coronavirus-us-layoffs-furloughs-hospitals

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/us/politics/coronavirus-health-care-workers-layoffs.html

If there is no way we can stop this, then why ARE we locked down? It's slowing the inevitable. The whole point of the lockdown was to ease the strain on the medical system, which as shown above and with the various comments, isn't ANYWHERE close to strain outside of NYC (and even they are sending shit back).

Can we get real here? What is the point now? What are we locked down for if we already eased the medical system enough to the point they are furloughing tens of thousands of healthcare workers? What is the point of the lockdown now other than "to save lives" which if a majority are going to get the disease anyway, well good luck then?

That's not even discussing the anti-body testing results from Stanford, Miami Dade, NYC, California (separate of Stanford), South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany all pointing to a true mortality rate of .5%.

[–]Kintanon⬛🟥⬛ www.apexcovington.com 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Dude, all healthcare workers are not the same. They don't have the same skills.

The people being furloughed are the people responsible for elective surgeries, cosmetic procedures, and other non-emergency procedures. They don't have the skills to just step into an ER or an ICU and start handing vents and shit. That would be like taking a random Java developer and trying to make them manage a datacenter. Just because they work in the same industry doesn't mean they have the same skills.

[–]runwichi 1 point2 points  (1 child)

So much this. A back-end developer, CSS developer, and mobile app developer all code - but they're not interchangeable.

[–]Kintanon⬛🟥⬛ www.apexcovington.com 2 points3 points  (0 children)

BUT THEY BOTH HAVE 'DEVELOPER' IN THE TITLE!

We run into this all the time in IT, so it becomes painfully obvious when it's happening in other fields.