COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1273597096105521155

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

And yet another record day for Arizona also... 2,519 more new cases, the previous high was was 2,392, also 2 days ago.

The more the Failed States of America's Government dawdles, the worse things will get.

[Calthrina950]

Cases nationwide are steady while deaths continue to decrease every week.  No one thought we were going to eradicate the virus.  The idea behind the lockdown was to mimimize the strain on the health care system until we had better testing and treatment.  We now have better testing and treatment. 

We need to manage hotspots where the health care system is close to capacity.  But beyond that, I don’t see how it’s a mistake to continue to open up.  The steady flow of new infections we are seeing, coupled with fewer and fewer deaths, seem like the very definition of “flattening the curve”.  And it’s the way we eventually get to herd immunity with the lowest cost to life and ecconomic hardship (besides deliberately infecting younger people, which seems impossible now).

It was a mistake to not get the virus under control to a similar degree as essentially every other developed country (South Korea, Australia, the entirety of Western Europe, etc) and without having adequate public health measures such as testing/contact tracing in place before opening up, because it means that cases are now rising again. Granted, Americans are perhaps so incredibly stupid that this may not ever have been possible in the Failed States of America, at least not with leaders such as Trump attempting to sabotage the process by discouraging sensible low-cost precautions like mask wearing.

The economic response could have been much better managed. There is no reason whatsoever why, for example, FSA unemployment should be so high (it is not in western Europe or elsewhere because they had more sensible employment/social safety net policies to deal with the economic effects of lockdown). There is absolutely 0 reason why anyone in the USA should not have enough to eat, or be at risk of losing their housing etc. The fact that some are is purely and entirely a policy failure, and is in no way necessitated by the pandemic itself. Both the health damage and the economic damage in the Failed States is unique among developed countries in its extent and both the health and the fact that both are as bad as they are is an entirely self-inflicted wound.

As it is, with cases rising we are going to start getting more economic damage, because remember that the economic damage started well before lockdowns were imposed - the economic damage resulted primarily from voluntary changes in behavior across the world. Leading economic indicators such as restaurant reservations are already starting to trend back down in states where virus cases are now surging. It is true there is a short term trade-off between lockdowns and economic activity, but if you go in the direction of opening up the economy too early, that trade-off disappears (and at some point reverses) as the surging virus at a certain point causes many people to once again change their behavior and go into self-lockdown mode or self semi-lockdown mode.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Trump's response was "effective" or "good". Most people on here have been harshly critical of his response, and I myself have expressed my concerns regarding it. However, do you believe that this country should go back under lockdown? What benefit will we derive now by shutting down all activity again, closing businesses, and restricting movement? Given the outburst of anger and emotion which we saw during the recent riots/protests (which I attribute partly to the response to the shutdowns), I would shutter to think about what we would face if we were to resume with such rigorous policies.

I also will say that it is impossible to expect for this virus to be completely eliminated. Just recently, New Zealand has had three new cases of coronavirus, in a country that has almost completely closed itself off from the outside world. I certainly think that we need to continue with the precautions that we have taken (i.e. limits on large gatherings, mask wearing, sanitary practices), but businesses and individuals cannot and should not be subjected to the same kinds of lockdowns that were in place before. In California, in Colorado, in Texas, and in other states, the authorities recognize that such a move would have costs far outweighing the benefits.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1273597096105521155

Not to engage in this pissing contest, but:

[pppolitics]

Coronavirus has come to Trump country

After being centered in blue states, cases are now being added faster in red ones

After months of quarantine and restrictions, a health care worker and a large group of her friends went out for a meal at a recently reopened restaurant in Florida.

She and 15 others have tested positive for the coronavirus, infections she blames on that meal.

Stories like this are what epidemiologists feared as states pushed to reopen after months of efforts to contain the virus: lax oversight and a failure of people to use protective measures such as masks in places where the virus had not receded.

What makes this story particularly telling, though, is where it occurred: Jacksonville, recently chosen by the Republican Party as the site of President Trump’s formal acceptance of his party’s nomination for November’s presidential election.

[...]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/17/coronavirus-has-come-trump-country/

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I don't think anyone is arguing that Trump's response was "effective" or "good". Most people on here have been harshly critical of his response, and I myself have expressed my concerns regarding it.

Yeah, my point in this was not really to single out Trump, my mention of him was just a side swipe. In any case personally I would say that Trump is a symptom of our problems, not the cause.

However, do you believe that this country should go back under lockdown? What benefit will we derive now by shutting down all activity again, closing businesses, and restricting movement? Given the outburst of anger and emotion which we saw during the recent riots/protests (which I attribute partly to the response to the shutdowns), I would shutter to think about what we would face if we were to resume with such rigorous policies.

This is a legitimate and good question which demands a serious answer. My answer would be that in the ideal case, if Americans were capable of doing so, yes we should go into a STRICT nationwide lockdown. However, you phrase it as "go back under lockdown." But this is not a question of returning to lockdown, but having an actual lockdown in the first place, because only a very small part of the country ever had anything like a European-style lockdown, much less an Asian-style one. If EVERYONE actually SERIOUSLY locked down, didn't go ANYWHERE unnecessarily for about a month, and 100% of people wore masks then that would be sufficient to temporarily drop R far below 1, so that the virus would basically for that month or so only spread within households and not between them. In households where there was one infection, other household-members would be infected, and after that the virus would largely die out. We know that this is possible because literally every other developed 1st world country other than the Failed States of America has done it. There is the possible exception of the Dis-United Kingdom, which still has fairly high #s, which nonetheless has done significantly better than the Failed States. Note that the reason the Dis-United Kingdom has done 2nd-worst among developed nations is their cultural similarity to the FSA. There is also the exception of Sweden, but that is only because they never tried, not because they are not capable.

However, in the realistic case, Americans seem to be incapable of locking down to the degree necessary to actually bring the virus under control. In the USA, we only ever brought down R on a nationwide level to about 1, never really under it (at least not significantly so). Given that a large # of Americans are idiots and are incapable of actually making a short term sacrifice for our collective long-term benefit, it is not worth making a short term sacrifice. This fundamentally seems to stem from our instant gratification culture and historically unprecedented sense of entitlement. In the USA, everything is about me, me, me and now, now, now. We as a society are utterly incapable of collective action that carries a short-term cost but which brings a long-term benefit that exceeds the short-term cost. This is why we are the Failed States. So I would say no, there is no reason to have another lockdown if it is a half-assed, uncoordinated, incompetent and dysfunctional lockdown, which is what it would be.

So my answer is that there is nothing we can do. We are simply collectively too short sighted and selfish as a society. This is why we are condemned to a bad health outcome, which will worsen our economic outcome as compared to taking the steps to get to a better health outcome. This is why we are doomed to the worst of both worlds - both a health and an economic disaster.

I also will say that it is impossible to expect for this virus to be completely eliminated. Just recently, New Zealand has had three new cases of coronavirus, in a country that has almost completely closed itself off from the outside world. I certainly think that we need to continue with the precautions that we have taken (i.e. limits on large gatherings, mask wearing, sanitary practices), but businesses and individuals cannot and should not be subjected to the same kinds of lockdowns that were in place before. In California, in Colorado, in Texas, and in other states, the authorities recognize that such a move would have costs far outweighing the benefits.

It is likely true that the virus cannot be entirely eliminated from the world (at least not prior to a vaccine). I would say, though, that this is primarily because it is effectively impossible to eliminate from the 3rd world/developing countries, and if it could not be eliminated in those countries, it would keep periodically spreading to developed nations. Every other developed has dramatically brought down case numbers other than the USA. If the world consisted only of countries with a level of development similar to Europe and the developed East Asian/Oceania countries with competent governments, then in theory I would say it appears to actually be theoretically possible to eliminate the virus from the globe (which is definitely more than I thought possible a few months ago, and speaks to the competence and capability of non-American developed nations).

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places. 

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

Compare and contrast the curve of California's case #s with the case #s of any western European country or developed East Asian/Oceania country.

Clearly all of those other countries have brought the virus under control to a far greater degree than California, so we should definitely be harshly critical of California's response.

Granted, the fault for the failure of California to control the pandemic is undoubtedly partially that California could not close its borders to other Failed States such as neighboring Arizona, where the virus was left to run rampant to a greater degree, and then the virus was imported into California from those states, but it is pretty clear that California never locked down to the same degree and with the same efficicacy as literally all non-American developed countries other than Sweden and perhaps the Disunited Kingdom. True, it is possible that the state government of California may have wished to do so, but it is clear that large numbers of human Californians never did so. And governments do not lock-down. People do (or, in the case of the Failed States, don't).

[President Johnson]

Today I heard news about a British study that found blood type is apparently connected to heavily course of Covid19 (here is a report). According to the study, blood type A has a 50% higher risk for heavy symptoms, while blood type 0 has the lowest risk.

It's kinda interesting because I remember a conversation at lunch with my boss from February and March and I said to him that I believe more unknown factors determine how mild or how bad the disease turns out. One suggestion I raised was blood type. I didn't read anything like that at the time and I have no deeper knowledge of medical issues in general, I was just guessing.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Today I heard news about a British study that found blood type is apparently connected to heavily course of Covid19 (here is a report). According to the study, blood type A has a 50% higher risk for heavy symptoms, while blood type 0 has the lowest risk.

It's kinda interesting because I remember a conversation at lunch with my boss from February and March and I said to him that I believe more unknown factors determine how mild or how bad the disease turns out. One suggestion I raised was blood type. I didn't read anything like that at the time and I have no deeper knowledge of medical issues in general, I was just guessing.

Yeah, I saw these studies a couple weeks back.  It actually prompted me to donate blood for the first time in a decade because I couldn’t remember my blood type and I knew they’d tell me if I did! (Turns out I’m O+, which is the most common type.)

[GeorgiaModerate]

Very interesting:

https://twitter.com/TheNBACentral/status/1273667511788109829

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Very interesting:

https://twitter.com/TheNBACentral/status/1273667511788109829

Someone actually invented this? Does it really work?

Where can people get one of these?

[Beet]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places. 

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

Except New York and Italy only have 5%-15% infected, and you need much higher than that (70%) for herd immunity. There is no meaningful benefit below the threshold. Besides, other states like Ohio that locked down very early are seeing low cases. California is an exception to the general trend that the numbers tend to be worse in states that locked down late and opened early, and good in states with very strict rules.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Either state governments are getting more blatant about hiding deaths or new infections are concentrated among much lower-risk populations than they were in March.

Why are you a Republican now?!

[Hammy]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places. 

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

There is no herd immunity buffer in California--they had a strict lockdown that was enforced and kept it under control, keeping hospitals from getting overwhelmed, and then reopened in phases. Look at New York for example which waited too long to go into lockdown, and ended up with a far higher number of cases and deaths despite having less people than CA.

[Dr. Arch]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places. 

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

There is no herd immunity buffer in California--they had a strict lockdown that was enforced and kept it under control, keeping hospitals from getting overwhelmed, and then reopened in phases. Look at New York for example which waited too long to go into lockdown, and ended up with a far higher number of cases and deaths despite having less people than CA.

[emailking]

Today I heard news about a British study that found blood type is apparently connected to heavily course of Covid19 (here is a report). According to the study, blood type A has a 50% higher risk for heavy symptoms, while blood type 0 has the lowest risk.

It's kinda interesting because I remember a conversation at lunch with my boss from February and March and I said to him that I believe more unknown factors determine how mild or how bad the disease turns out. One suggestion I raised was blood type. I didn't read anything like that at the time and I have no deeper knowledge of medical issues in general, I was just guessing.

The card in my wallet says I'm B+. I guess that's middle of the road risk.

[Calthrina950]

Today, Governor Newsom made mask-wearing mandatory throughout California: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/18/880583357/california-gov-newsom-makes-face-masks-mandatory-amid-rising-coronavirus-cases. This is in response to the resurgence in coronavirus cases which the state has seen in recent days. In Arizona, the mayors of Phoenix and Mesa have issued orders making masks mandatory; Governor Ducey had caved, and allowed cities to issue mask guidelines of their own. Mayors in Texas are requesting permission from Governor Abbott to do the same. In Florida, mayors in Tampa and Orlando have made mask-wearing mandatory. And North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is considering mandating them as well.

As before, the partisan divide continues to persist, with Democratic Governors and Mayors having no problems issuing mask orders. From their perspective, mandatory masks are a public health measure, and trump any considerations of constitutionality or personal liberties. Republican Governors have-with the exceptions of Baker and Hogan-continued to refrain from doing the same. Like Gov. DeWine in Ohio, they feel that such a move would be too intrusive upon the rights of citizens.

In my home state of Colorado, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been on a downward trajectory. A few weeks ago (as I noted), Polis issued his order reiterating the right of businesses to refuse service to maskless customers, but stopped short of a full mask mandate. If cases were to resurge here, I wouldn't be surprised if he finally made them mandatory. Likewise, my city of Colorado Springs may do so, since our City Council discussed the possibility last month.

Mask orders will continue to persist through the summer and into the fall. 

[Dr. Arch]

The updated numbers for COVID-19 in the U.S. are in for 6/18 per: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I'm keeping track of these updates daily and updating at the end of the day, whenever all states finish reporting for that day.

Δ Change: Day-by-day Growth or Decline or COVID-19 Spread/Deaths.

• IE: Are we flattening the curve enough?

Σ Increase: A day's contribution to overall percentage growth of COVID-19 cases/deaths.

• IE: What's the overall change in the total?

<Last Numbers for 3/26-3/28 in this Post>
<Last Numbers for 3/29-4/4 in this Post>
<Last Numbers for 4/5-4/11 in this Post>
<Last Numbers for 4/12-4/18 in this Post>
<Last Numbers for 4/19-4/25 in this post>
<Last Numbers for 4/26-5/2 in this post>
<Last Numbers for 5/3-5/9 in this post>
<Last Numbers for 5/10-5/16 in this post>
<Last Numbers for 5/17-5/23 in this post>
<Last Numbers for 5/24-5/30 in this post>
<Last Numbers for 5/31-6/6 in this post>

6/7: <Sunday>

• Cases: 2,007,449 (+20,274 | Δ Change: ↓39.93% | Σ Increase: ↑1.02%)
• Deaths: 112,469 (+412 | Δ Change: ↓38.78% | Σ Increase: ↑0.37%)

6/8:

• Cases: 2,026,493 (+19,044 | Δ Change: ↓6.07% | Σ Increase: ↑0.95%)
• Deaths: 113,055 (+586 | Δ Change: ↑42.23% | Σ Increase: ↑0.52%)

6/9:

• Cases: 2,045,549 (+19,056 | Δ Change: ↑0.06% | Σ Increase: ↑0.94%)
• Deaths: 114,148 (+1,093 | Δ Change: ↑86.52% | Σ Increase: ↑0.97%)

6/10:

• Cases: 2,066,508 (+20,959 | Δ Change: ↑9.98% | Σ Increase: ↑1.02%)
• Deaths: 115,137 (+989 | Δ Change: ↓9.52% | Σ Increase: ↑0.87%)

6/11:

• Cases: 2,089,701 (+23,193 | Δ Change: ↑10.66% | Σ Increase: ↑1.12%)
• Deaths: 116,034 (+897 | Δ Change: ↓9.30% | Σ Increase: ↑0.78%)

6/12:

• Cases: 2,116,922 (+27,221 | Δ Change: ↑17.37% | Σ Increase: ↑1.30%)
• Deaths: 116,825 (+791 | Δ Change: ↓11.82% | Σ Increase: ↑0.68%)

6/13:

• Cases: 2,142,224 (+25,302 | Δ Change: ↓7.05% | Σ Increase: ↑1.20%)
• Deaths: 117,527 (+702 | Δ Change: ↓11.25% | Σ Increase: ↑0.60%)

6/14: <Sunday>

• Cases: 2,162,144 (+19,920 | Δ Change: ↓21.27% | Σ Increase: ↑0.93%)
• Deaths: 117,853 (+326 | Δ Change: ↓53.56% | Σ Increase: ↑0.28%)

6/15:

• Cases: 2,182,950 (+20,806 | Δ Change: ↑4.45% | Σ Increase: ↑0.96%)
• Deaths: 118,283 (+430 | Δ Change: ↑31.90% | Σ Increase: ↑0.36%)

6/16:

• Cases: 2,208,400 (+25,450 | Δ Change: ↑22.32% | Σ Increase: ↑1.17%)
• Deaths: 119,132 (+849 | Δ Change: ↑97.44% | Σ Increase: ↑0.72%)

6/17 (Yesterday):

• Cases: 2,234,471 (+26,071 | Δ Change: ↑2.44% | Σ Increase: ↑1.18%)
• Deaths: 119,941 (+809 | Δ Change: ↓4.71% | Σ Increase: ↑0.68%)

6/18 (Today):

• Cases: 2,263,651 (+29,180 | Δ Change: ↑11.93% | Σ Increase: ↑1.31%)
• Deaths: 120,688 (+747 | Δ Change: ↓7.66% | Σ Increase: ↑0.62%)

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places.  

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

Except New York and Italy only have 5%-15% infected, and you need much higher than that (70%) for herd immunity. There is no meaningful benefit below the threshold. Besides, other states like Ohio that locked down very early are seeing low cases. California is an exception to the general trend that the numbers tend to be worse in states that locked down late and opened early, and good in states with very strict rules.

I’m not talking about strict herd immunity.  But it is absolutely not true that “there is no meaningful benefit below the threshold”.  If you institute a lockdown that reduced R to 1.1 when a very small percentage of the population has been infected, the virus will continue to grow.  But use the same measures when 15% of the population is immune, and the R will be .93, and the virus will slowly die out.   That’s why the same measures that lead to the decline of the virus in NY might lead to its continued growth in CA.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places.  

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

There is no herd immunity buffer in California--they had a strict lockdown that was enforced and kept it under control, keeping hospitals from getting overwhelmed, and then reopened in phases. Look at New York for example which waited too long to go into lockdown, and ended up with a far higher number of cases and deaths despite having less people than CA.

Right now, cases are exploding in CA, while they have been in decline in NY for almost two months.  If CA had waited until they had an immunity buffer, their cases might be declining now too.  But their death toll would be much higher right now.  My post was not meant to come down definitively in favor of one strategy, just to point out why different states might get different results from the same measures.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Today provided more leading evidence that the positivity rate is not only no longer declining, but has started to enter back into an uptrend. It is still theoretically possible this might be an abberation, but it becomes more likely with each additional day of these sorts of results:



Here is hoping we don't break once again above 30k cases on Friday (I was hoping that we would delay that benchmark at least until next week). We got way too close to it for comfort on Thursday, and with the positivity rate seem to have stabilized and now starting to change direction, if test numbers (which have been below the peak the past few days) go back up on Friday, that may be enough to already push us above the 30k marker. Then the next stop is to exceed the old high and start hitting 40k per day.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

[Dr. Arch]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

Florida is already running out of ICU beds, and this is just the start of a spike for them. When hospitals get overwhelmed, the mortality rate goes up with it.

This is without the effects of deliberate infection, which would be apocalyptic. We don't even know what the long term effects of this virus could be (see Shingles).

I know that you, and really all of us, would like for things to go back to normal, but it's simply not feasible as things are.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

If you want to be deliberately infected, I wholeheartedly endorse you deliberately infecting yourself.

As for the fatality rate, the best estimates generally range between .5% and 1% for populations overall (obviously age variation among populations changes this, as well as other factors such as whether medical capacity at any point gets overwhelmed and whether newer treatments lower the fatality rate over time, and whether you account for un-reported/excess deaths, and various other such factors). Given that various localities have had well more than .26% of their total populations dying, .26% isn't particularly plausible unless you are talking about special circumstances such as a population that skews young, has significantly fewer pre-existing risk conditions, or a group of patients that has all been provided with the best available treatments (probably remdisivir/plasma at this point) and highest quality care, etc.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01738-2