Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="seebs" data-source="post: 7942651" data-attributes="member: 61529">No, that's not what "flattening the curve" means.Flattening the curve means slowing down the spread so that fewer people get sick at any time ever, not just so that it's spread out more. The point of the flatter curve isn't just that it's spread out more to even load on the health care system; it's that fewer people get sick at all.If there exists a curve, at all, if anyone gets sick and then eventually people stop getting sick, you're still in the territory covered by "flatten the curve".Eliminating the epidemic, by whatever means, is the tail end of the curve, but there is always a curve. The point is that it kills a lot fewer people if it's flat -- and part of that is because of load on the health care system, but part of that is because fewer people ever get it at all.So, yes, social isolation, distancing, quarantining, all good things, and could conceivably keep it from hitting absolutely everyone, but there's no chance of having it completely contained from day one, especially not in the US, where we have over 50 distinct governments in charge of setting these policies and a lot of them are run by people who explicitly believe that all the claims that we should do something quickly are just excuses for attacking the President. So it's not gonna happen; we're not in a position to fully contain the thing. But we might be able to contain it enough that it never really hits the majority of the population. If we get super lucky.But it turns out that we're arguing for the exact same course of action, here, I'm just pointing out that part of the benefit of it is that it reduces deaths no matter how successful it is, and that I don't think we have the resources or social tools necessary to eradicate an epidemic that effectively.</blockquote>

Verification