Submitted by sibylshepherd in USA

We are on the edge of a precipice! The U.S. will reopen in fits and starts, it can't not, however you feel about it, and covid will slay us in fits and starts until a cure is found in a year or two or maybe sooner or maybe never. Easily hundreds of thousands more people will die, according to some models. We need decisive action now, and here's a plan for going forward that I think the leaders of our country are foolish for not considering seriously:

There are 330,000,000 people in the U.S.A. Many of these people are at risk for complications and/or fatalities from covid-19 due to age, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, lung & heart disease, etc. If we can separate the population into a high-risk group and a group of people who have less than a 1% chance of ICU hospitalization from infection. And if the low-risk group still makes up the majority (say, 3/5) of Americans. We can achieve an effective herd immunity if around 70% = 140,000,000 people from this group volunteer to become infected, quarantine for two weeks, and then go about their lives, taking antibody tests as needed. We could do this in less than a half a year by asking a new group of 10,000,000 low-risk people spread across the country to volunteer every two weeks. We could do this without overwhelming the hospitals, because 1% of 10,000,000 is 100,000, which is around the total number of ICU beds we have available in this U.S. We could do this with a total death toll, among the low-risk group, of less than .1% of 140,000,000 = 140,000. And we could ask the volunteers in these groups to participate in vaccine challenge trials to speed up their development and testing.

Then, once the low-risk group has achieved herd immunity, each individual in the high-risk group could choose to remain in self-isolation until a vaccine or treatment is found, or choose to volunteer to be infected.

With no vaccine or herd immunity, I believe that the societal, economic, and death toll the virus causes collaterally will be much worse than anything this course of action causes directly. Furthermore, by standing by and doing nothing as more of our states open up and welcome the virus to spread through vulnerable populations with almost zero immunity, the leaders of our country are condemning us to die.

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emma wrote

fuck off, boris johnson

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sibylshepherd OP wrote

What's your plan, Margaret Thatcher? Sipping martinis in a bunker somewhere while the poor die by the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions? Oh we'll be okay if we just wait it out?

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emma wrote (edited )

I'm sure this will not the case if we infect uh... 140,000,000 people with the coronavirus.

Fuck off you fucking fascist dipshit.

You should go ahead and get infected and not seek out healthcare. Lead by example.

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ziq wrote

something tells me you'll be safe in a big sealed-off office while all your workers die in the trenches

imaging thinking the magical economy is more important than people's lives

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sibylshepherd OP wrote

Imagine thinking that people's lives don't depend on the magical economy. Like we'll just bail out the entire country. For how long? A year or more? Meanwhile the redder states go on with their lives already, inviting even more death.

Ignorant twats can't rise above their own silly notions to see the problems for what they are. It isn't a left/right, worker/owner, political/economical, or whatever, dichotomy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will die, that's going to happen and it's not my fault. You have to make a choice: Do you want those hundreds of thousands of people to be ones who volunteered, knowing what's at stake, to help the world get beyond this fucking bullshit, or do you want those people to be innocents? Who do you want to die? You have to answer that honestly. And if you can't then fuck off because you're the one in la-la land.

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ziq wrote

I want the global economy to collapse and for money, work, states, borders, class and other obscene fabrications to be seen for what they really are by everyone and abandoned forever. I want the rich to lose all their wealth and jump out of tall buildings, as is their custom.

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sibylshepherd OP wrote

Well I want that too. But that'll only happen if we all die, because you and your ilk are not strong enough to overcome your oppressors and you never will be, as is your custom.

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sibylshepherd OP wrote

I don't own shit, dude. I've been a low wage construction worker my entire life and I'd like nothing more than to watch our capitalist oligarchy burn. You're just plain wrong about me and my ideas.

But I tell you what, when covid has caused 200,000+ deaths in the U.S. by the end of the year, and we have nothing to show for our sacrifices: no vaccine, no cure, massive unemployment and poverty, big businesses monopolizing the entirety of our supply chain, sickness and death everywhere, and still no way forward, I invite you to eat my ass when you realize it could have been avoided if only we weren't just a bunch of clueless chickenshits. And in return, I'll eat your ass if I'm wrong. Deal?

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MHC wrote

Covid-19 infection only gives immunity for a few months.

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