You're totally missing the point of current public policy.
We know that sars-cov-2 is highly contagious - R0 values up above 2 without any action. This means that with no action, the entire population will be infected rapidly. Out of the entire population a certain percentage will have no symptoms. Another group will have mild symptoms. Another group will have severe symptoms. Another group will require hospitalization. Members of the last two groups will die.
The point of current public policy (at least from the POV of the people smart enough to understand and propose it) has been to decrease R0 so that it takes much longer for the entire population to become infected (which will almost certainly happen anyway unless an effective vaccine appears quickly). Why would we want to do that? Because if the entire population is rapidly infected, the numbers requiring hospitalization would vastly exceed the resources of our medical system. That means that:
1. Some of those who might have survived COVID-19 had they received effective hospital care will die.
2. People with other treatements requiring hospital care will find it difficult or impossible to receive it, leading to more deaths from non-COVID-19 causes.
None of this has anything to do with "if they get infected they will die a horrible death and so will everyone around them" - that's nothing but a silly strawman painted by people who, for some reason, want to downplay the risk of allowing a virus with R0 > 2 to plough through a population.
Everywhere you see governments building up these huge emergency hospitals and then tearing them down again without them being used.
If your story were true they’d keep the hospitals and loosen restrictions to maximize use, saving the economy while keeping a safe margin.
> allowing a virus with R0 > 2 to plough through a population
Sounds so scary but
> the entire population to become infected (which will almost certainly happen anyway)
Is the same thing, but put in a not scary manner.
These people making the rules are not as smart as you think they are. When the rules were made there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of pressure to take action. Logically some of the rules work and some don’t. Truly smart people would just say ‘oh well we will remove the rules that don’t work’. Instead what you see is clinging to ineffective rules, defending them with poor excuses as doing otherwise means admitting you were wrong.
In the US, look at mr. Cuomo and his indefensible failure of sending infected old people to nursing homes. It’s clearly the worst thing to do and look at his reaction now that the results are in! He just says he didn’t know even though his signature is on the page ordering it. How smart is that.
Handwaving nonsense. You said that, not people advocating for serious and sensible public policy re: COVID-19.
> "Sounds so scary ..."
Have you actually listened to the people who had COVID-19 and recovered from more than mild symptoms? If there was an army or a terrorist group about to invade the US and kill 100k people, mostly at random, I suspect you'd consider that fairly "scary", as would most other people.
> "Is the same thing..."
As noted by another sibling comment, no it's not the same thing at all.
> "... there was a lot of uncertainty ..."
There is still a lot of uncertainty. We don't really know what works and what doesn't work. What you characterize as "clinging to ineffective rules" I would characterize as "trying to be cautious in the face of massive uncertainty".
I would never defend all of Cuomo's actions as NY Governor. He made a number of extremely serious errors, even though his demeanour in his later press briefings was exemplary.
> There is still a lot of uncertainty. We don't really know what works and what doesn't work.
Yet there are the unnamed but great
> people advocating for serious and sensible public policy re: COVID-19.
According to you these people have no idea what they are doing. Indeed if you believe that, the only way to go is to keep doing nothing out of caution.
> allowing a virus with R0 > 2 to plough through a population
puts a very concrete time estimate on it. We know that the SARS-CoV-2 replicates every 4 days on average, so this scenario has a doubling of cases every 4 days. Starting from a single infected person, the US would become completely infected in roughly 120 days, i.e. they would roughly be done by this point or early next month, with all the consequences that entails. In contrast,
> the entire population to become infected (which will almost certainly happen anyway)
does not imply any specific timeline. It could happen in 30 days, it could happen in 30 weeks, it could happen in 30 years.
We know that sars-cov-2 is highly contagious - R0 values up above 2 without any action. This means that with no action, the entire population will be infected rapidly. Out of the entire population a certain percentage will have no symptoms. Another group will have mild symptoms. Another group will have severe symptoms. Another group will require hospitalization. Members of the last two groups will die.
The point of current public policy (at least from the POV of the people smart enough to understand and propose it) has been to decrease R0 so that it takes much longer for the entire population to become infected (which will almost certainly happen anyway unless an effective vaccine appears quickly). Why would we want to do that? Because if the entire population is rapidly infected, the numbers requiring hospitalization would vastly exceed the resources of our medical system. That means that:
1. Some of those who might have survived COVID-19 had they received effective hospital care will die. 2. People with other treatements requiring hospital care will find it difficult or impossible to receive it, leading to more deaths from non-COVID-19 causes.
None of this has anything to do with "if they get infected they will die a horrible death and so will everyone around them" - that's nothing but a silly strawman painted by people who, for some reason, want to downplay the risk of allowing a virus with R0 > 2 to plough through a population.