Replies

Embrace herd immunity. Because that is how this story ends, like it or not

The problem with the "natural" approach to herd immunity is that it requires 90% of the population to be infected for herd immunity to kick in. 90% of the US population multiplied by the current hospitalization rate of 0.1517% gives us 450,549 COVID patients requiring hospitalizations. The US currently has 85,247 ICU beds. Meanwhile people are not going to stop having heart attacks and other problems requiring hospitalization. There is also the problem of people who survive COVID developing life-threatening blood clots and permanent lung damage. That's why this healthy 30 year old is opting out of the herd immunity experiment currently being pushed on us by an increasingly desperate business community. I don't hire a plumber to fix my computer and I don't let businessmen make my health care decisions for me.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/05/18/icu-bed-capacity-in-all-50-us-states-compared-infographic/#75d7a4b124dc

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-and-bloodclots

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2247086-the-coronavirus-is-leaving-some-people-with-permanent-lung-damage/

The good news is there is a way to build herd immunity without overloading our ICUs or serious risk of long term health problems. Namely vaccination. I'm sure President Trump has the best people working on a vaccine as we type. I'll admit I'm not crazy about taking a new vaccine, but right now it would seem to be our best shot (no pun intended) at saving lives in a way that doesn't shut down the economy.

The problem with the "natural" approach to herd immunity is that it requires 90% of the population to be infected for herd immunity to kick in. 90% of the US population multiplied by the current hospitalization rate of 0.1517% gives us 450,549 COVID patients requiring hospitalizations. The US currently has 85,247 ICU beds

That presupposes that they all get sick and go to the hospital at the exact same time.. Our experience has shown that we can manage the case load and prevent that from occurring. Even in New York at the height of the pandemic.

Also, hospitals don't keep huge numbers of ICU beds open because it makes no economic sense to do so. But they are capable of ramping-up and greatly expanding that capacity on short notice. Especially with the umpety-ump thousand ventilators Trump keeps telling us he's produced.

My daughter is an ICU nurse so I know something about this. The biggest impediment to a ramp-up is frankly a shortage of people with her skills.