What’s more, do you have any reasonable figures to suggest why letting a percentage or more of the population die unnecessarily, consigning even larger numbers to long-term health problems and so forth is somehow a good choice?
If you ask people to cite statistics for their claims, you should also do so for your claims such as this one.
It is an axiom of healthcare that outcomes suffer in an overburdened healthcare system, and readily apparent why that is the case. That said, for those too lazy to look, here’s literally the top result for me when googling terms related to this: https://www.kabc.com/news/covid-19-mortality-rates-rise-as-h...
If I squint my eyes a bit. Reduce the burden on the pension system?
Long-term disabled or ill people who are unable to work will effectively take early retirement (in some cases they can draw on their actual pension early too), and depend on state support from then on whether it's called pension or something else. The duration of payouts will be longer than for ordinary retirement age.
It's not just miserable for those survivors, it's expensive for the state.
Long-term health problems are also likely to cost more in healthcare later.
Have you considered that of 100 friends, family and acquaintances you’d see two die and 10 would have a painful and difficult future?
Basically - this is not nothing, it’s being treated like a Big Deal because it legitimately is. There’s a lot of talk from the “treatment is worse than the disease” crowd, scant few of whom are experts. And like climate change and evolution deniers many of the arguments seem to boil down to conspiracy theories or the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia argument - “science is a liar ... sometimes”: https://youtu.be/Zgk8UdV7GQ0
No, you sacrifice an uncertain percentage of the population (but probably larger than you suggest because healthcare systems would be quickly overwhelmed by a massive spike in cases) to both death and long-term sickness and disability, but for what? Lockdown causes people to lose their jobs, children to miss school, and others to suffer problems with mental health (although to use your phrasing, this would just be "a few percent" of the population) but it saves people's lives and health.
I'm also really disappointed that people don't get the idea that people dying and having long-term health issues doesn't screw the economy too.
- Advocating for the death of a million people when it's avoidable is abhorrent
- It would be more than that, due to the collapse of health services, causing people who would currently survive to die instead
- It would be more again due to the increased likelihood of viral mutations when left to run rampant
- Also due to the collapse of health services, most deaths would be outside hospitals, i.e. at home, slowly suffocating to death
- Some would survive with brain damage due to lack of oxygen at home
- While dying, people at home would know if they could get a hospital place they'd probably survive, and avoid brain damage, but they can't get one
- It wouldn't even boost the economy, because a million deaths is actually quite a drag on the economy, especially when most of them are dying at home with their families staying at home to look after them due to collapse of the health services
- It would be horrendously traumatic; a lot of people would struggle to work afterwards after watching their family members, friends, neighbours and people they know die at home slowly from an avoidable cause
- It would cause tremendous social division, as many of the traumatised people having watched their family members (& friends, etc) die, avoidably, would know it was caused by the actions of their own neighbours & local community, along with national decision-making to "sacrifice" those million
- That's just deaths; survivors with long Covid would also be a large drag on the economy, struggling or unable to work, requiring support, and potentially expensive for the healthcare services and their familiies in later life if it's long-term organ damage as some fear. The numbers with long Covid would exceed the current number of official unemployed
- Advocating for serious life-long disability for another several million people when it's avoidable is abhorrent too
[ EDIT: the number I originally used for "requiring hospitalization" were way off. I've edited to reflect data from September provided by the CDC. The 20% -> ICU figure comes from the NYC experience in May, but seems roughly correct from other global hotspots ]
Roughly 0.4% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization. Of those, 20% will require ICU treatment.
In the end, the entire human race will be exposed to SARS-COV-2. If that happens all on the same day, or week, or month or probably even year, no health care system in the world can possibly deal with the case load.
Some of those who might have survived COVID19 with hospital care will die.
But (and this is the important part) those with other medical conditions that timely and effective health care could have treated will also die. Trauma (e.g. car or tool accidents). Infectious disease. Cancer. Chronic health conditions.
And in killing all these people, you've made nothing better for those who survive, because if you think the economy has gone to hell under current attempts to deal with it, you clearly cannot imagine it as the entire health care system melts down.
COVID19 is not a personal health crisis. Most people will not die of it (even though hundreds of thousands will, which is not going to be much comfort to their families, friends, colleagues and neighbors. It is a public health crisis that threatens to overwhelm our health care systems and thus have far worse effects than just the disease itself.
Where do you get these numbers from? California has about 50k new cases per day, with probably another 50k cases that were not tested. According to your stats 20k people will require hospitalization and 5k will require an ICU bed per day.
Where do you get this from? I do think, of those requiring hospitalization, there is somewhere around a <20% mortality rate (it seems to vary by region).
This statement is false.
(With regard to any reasonable definition of exposure to the current virulent strains and assuming the vaccines do their job.)
One major purpose of the vaccines is to cause R < 1 and the virus to fade out, so that most humans will not be exposed to the virus ever in their lives. The other major purpose is for those humans who are exposed to it, to significantly reduce the chance of the virus causing harm.
Like putting out a fire before it spreads everywhere. Some things are burned but not everything is even touched by the flame, if it's put out.
Sure, it's certainly up for debate (and the future) whether or not the rate will drop low enough that most humans escape exposure. That will depend on more than just R0 - we still don't know if the vaccines (any of them) prevent transference, and the emergence of new variants with higher R0 values but identical infection mechanisms (which most people would agree is the same virus) may also complicate this quite a bit.
So sure, maybe I should have dialed it back to "it's entirely possible that the entire human race will be exposed to SARS-COV-2, though if we are lucky that probably won't happen".
I don't think that changes my fundamental point that the crisis for a pandemic like this is not in personal health - "Am I going to die?" - but in the public health - "can my society's health care systems still function?"
