03 April 2020

Thoughts on a pandemic

There seem to be two ideas on how to handle this pandemic. One is to enter a period of isolation so that the virus will burn itself down, followed by massive testing and case tracking to completely eliminate it. The other approach is to enter a period of isolation so that the bulge of initial cases doesn't create rationing in the health system, then the virus will become endemic and more slowly spread in a manageable way.

My impression is that a majority of people view the first scenario as realistic and see anyone proposing the second as okay with mass murder.

The evidence supports the second scenario, and it's not nearly as scary as everyone first assumed. The virus is already endemic, as of today the world has 1 million confirmed cases touching almost every country, but the real infection rate is probably many times that number because half of those infected barely notice they have it. In places like the United States where testing for the virus was initially very low, the actual infection rate is at least 4 times the number of confirmed cases.