there is no treatment, only mitigation of symptoms.
there is no such assumption. america remains the richest country on earth. the problem is wealth is unequally distributed. we can afford the lockdown if wealthy people are willing to pay for it.
herd immunity means 80-90% of a population has been infected and developed resistance. the us has 328.2 million people, 80% is 260 million, lets say the fatality rate is an unexpectedly low 1/2 percent – that’s 1.3 million people dead. ( and that’s even assuming individual immunity is possible, which we don’t know yet. )
if people don’t think that death rates like that will tank the us economy, increase suicide, self-harm, and domestic violence i have no words.
the reason not to exceed hospitalization capacity is to keep the death rate as low as possible. ( more towards a half percent, and not say 4 or 5 percent. ) so that people who need symptom mitigation ( respiratory support, cardiac support, limb amputations, etc. ) can be helped.
the only sane objective is to keep as many people alive as possible… which means not exposing people to the virus.
he squandered our ability to get the rate of testing above the rate of infection. if we had started with adequate testing, we could have isolated sick people before the spread got out of hand.
right now it’s anyone’s guess if we can get testing rates growing faster than infection rates. we aren’t there yet. and that’s got to be step 1.
