DougieK wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:08 am
"The countries that aren't getting these deaths now will get them when they lift the lockdown" .... I'm not even sure how to approach that statement. This guy actually makes a lot of sense but i'm not sure I agree with him.
There’s a couple of issues.
The first is that there is no guarantee that getting the population infected and enduring the resulting deaths will stop a second wave of infections from taking place. At this stage we don’t know enough about how long immunity persists in humans simply because not enough time has passed. We also don’t know enough about how the virus mutates to know if a second strain is likely to emerge and bypass the immunity developed against the initial strain. In short, they’re taking a punt. Someone had to do it and in time we’ll know what the correct response was but right now people are still very much in the dark with this.
The second is that for some countries it may not be possible to avoid the reintroduction of the virus down the track. We’re an island so we can easily enforce border restrictions and quarantine incoming passengers. We’re in a position where we can probably keep those efforts up until a vaccine or effective drug treatment is ready too. European countries don’t have that luxury and there is some merit in the idea of ripping the bandaid off and going for herd immunity rather than trying to eradicate it or enforcing rolling lockdowns each time a new outbreak is found. Of course this is all based on certain assumptions about how we develop immunity to this thing (see the first point) so there is a non-zero chance that it will backfire.
If the Swedish approach turns out to be the most effective way it would be ironic that the US is on track to be one of the best responders through sheer incompetence.
