Look, the only strategy is getting the virus. That is the solution and the problem. The difference is how we get it. Germany has it right. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have it wrong. The only salvation is herd immunity. Its the only thing that will work. The vaccine will be too late. The drugs will lesson the deaths a bit.
Germany does not think that they can stop it. Straight away they got 4 cases and handled that perfectly. But then the inevitable occurred. The Chinese, Italians, and Iranians showed up. Or people with contacts to those people showed up. Nothing you can do when the rest of the world catches the virus. There is no amount of social distancing that will work. So Merkel made it clear, 70% of Germans will get the virus. And the first thing they did is to quarantine the people at risk. Not the people who had the virus. Not the whole population. They quarantined the people at most risk.
Here is why that is so smart. 20% of 80 year olds will need doctors care. Less than 1% of people under 30 will need doctors care. So there is no reason not to let the younger people develop their immunity. Once they get it, they will not be able to spread it. And they will not clog the hospitals as they get the virus. The at risk people clog the hospitals. So they were sent to their homes.
Germany seems to have gotten the same number of cases as Spain or Italy. But their death rate is the lowest in the world. Thats because their potential corpses are hiding in their homes. And while the Asian lock down artists are battling the inevitable second and third waves of the virus. Germany will have firmly established its herd immunity. The virus will keep running into immune people who can neither get the virus nor spread it.
Two things governments forget. They don’t control the rest of the world. And they have to come out of their homes sometime. If you believe those two things, you know you cannot hide from the virus. You have to face it.
[The only salvation is herd immunity. ]
Makes sense.
I rather get a tiny bit of it than a screaming mouth-full.
That way my body can fight it off faster and easier.
This is a response you should read about handling the virus.
Good post. I wasn’t aware that Germany did that, by the way.
Germany should be one of the first to get antibody testing underway then, so they know when they can tell seniors that it’s relatively safe to rejoin society. Those who want to wait for a vaccine can stay self-isolated.
A guy from nordland on German and Swedish stats:
Even deaths can be covered up because a lot of people who die are going to be elderly who haven’t been tested and they’re not planning to test most of the dead. Curiously the people who are dying after being tested positive are disproportionately migrants
https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/timeline-how-the-coronavirus-has-developed-in-sweden
“Thirty-three people have died so far after testing positive for the new coronavirus, including 15 in Stockholm. Of those, at least six were Somali-Swedes, a board member of an association for Somali-Swedish medical doctors in Sweden told public broadcaster SVT’s current affairs programme Agenda.”
Instead of locking down they country they simply advised people on social distancing and a lot of the “new Swedes” decided to just ignore the advice. They’re blaming language skills and lack of information but mysteriously the lack of language skills doesn’t seem to hurt East Asian and East European migrants in the same way. I’m seeing various migrant groups behave in rather different ways on the streets of supposedly locked down Helsinki, too, and it’s all very predictable.
I suspect that it turns out that Sweden is in fact doing it right that shielding the elderly instead of shutting down the economy is better in the end but it doesn’t mean that the disease is sparing Sweden or that the low numbers mean anything, to the contrary, they’ve decided to let it spread and to keep their estimates of the real number secret. We’ll maybe know them after the epidemic once they start publishing studies – but only if it does turn out to be the right bet.
If corona turns out to be deadlier then it will be the thing that pops the entire “Scandinavian model” bubble. People abroad have been making the mistake of trusting Scandinavian governments and their invented statistics because Scandinavian people are honest in person.]
+ 1
In a couple of weeks the daily presser announcement will be a “good news, bad news”.
“The good news is that we’ve flattened the curve and we can start opening up. The bad news is that everyone will eventually be exposed, some will get sick, some will get really sick....but we’ll be able to treat you if you are one of the really sick ones.”
I get what you are saying but we have free will. I don’t want to catch it, period. I may be at risk due to CV history, I don’t know the full details on what underlying conditions are most vulnerable but it seems asthma and diabetes are primary.
With the free will, we can choose to self isolate as much as we can. IMO we should advise people to stay at home as much as possible especially over the next few weeks. We should not encourage people at seemingly lower risk to go on as usual because they have a 99% chance of just minor symptoms.
Meanwhile we don’t know enough about this disease. Just because someone developed antibodies, we don’t have any assurances as to when they are truly no longer contagious. They would need to test positive for antibodies, and negative for the virus - and you’d have to trust the test was accurate. There will be false negatives, and there will be tests where the viral load is too low to register as positive but doesn’t necessarily mean they cannot spread the disease.
It’s a tough spot to be in for all of humanity.