Drs have learned some things about covid 19 which has helped. I feel Fauci and the world’s experts should have known a bad virus would be deadly to sickly, old people. Common sense and experience should have warranted extreme caution and quarantine of those people immediately.
Yes, Doctors have learned about this virus in the past few months. All I have been saying is that by extending the timeline, they have the opportunity to develop treatments which can result in a net drop in loss of life. To me this is important if we don't have a vaccine for a few years. At this time, there is still not definitive evidence that herd immunity is going to be meaningful for this particular virus.
https://www.ibtimes.com/coronavirus-treatment-drug-banned-sports-found-effective-fighting-covid-19-3006779
“In the present COVID-19 pandemic, we suggest short-term supportive EPO treatment of severely affected patients, which we expect to improve disease course and outcome. Although case reports always call for extreme caution, two recently published/submitted case studies on EPO in seriously ill COVID-19 patients are encouraging for the present concept,” said the researchers in their
paper published in Molecular Medicine.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/why-covid-death-rate-down/613945/
Hospitalizations and deaths moved up and down in tandem before June. After June, they’ve diverged. National hospitalizations are rising, but deaths aren’t.
One study
from a hospital in Milan found that from March to May, the mortality rate of its COVID-19 patients declined from 24 percent to 2 percent—"without significant changes in patients’ age.” British hospitals found that their hospital mortality rate has declined
every month since April.
So what’s going on? Maybe doctors are just getting smarter about the disease.
Also, the herd immunity approach doesn't mean the economy just keeps chugging along:
https://theweek.com/speedreads/924238/sweden-literally-gained-nothing-from-staying-open-during-covid19-including-no-economic-gains
Sweden decided early on for
a "soft" approach, forgoing lockdowns for subtle changes to commerce and entertainment, voluntary mitigation guidelines, and encouraging working from home. "This is what has happened," economic correspondent
Peter S. Goodman reports in The New York Times: "Not only have
thousands more people died than in neighboring countries that imposed lockdowns, but Sweden's economy has fared little better."
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sweden-didnt-impose-a-lockdown-its-economy-is-just-as-bad-as-its-neighbors-who-did-2020-06-25
But there is also an economic question. Did Sweden benefit economically from avoiding the lockdown?
The economic data doesn’t suggest that.
Why didn’t Sweden benefit economically?
“The simple answer is that in a pandemic, most people will change their behavior to avoid catching the virus. The cautious behavior is voluntary, irrespective of whether there is no lockdown, as in Sweden, or there is a lockdown, as in Denmark,” Joshi said.
I agree - it sucks what has happened to the economy. A lot of people are going to be evicted over the next month or so, simply because their job evaporated due to the lockdown. Small businesses will be lost. College towns are going to have severe impacts this fall due to the lack of home football games.
However, there is a compromise between complete lockdown and completely being opened. Its called masks and social distancing. Does it solely resolve the problem? No. But it is an important contributing factor to allow us to work through two competing interests.
1) Keep economy chugging along
2) Protect citizens
Using masks and social distancing buys time for doctors to find a way to at least improve survival rates of those hospitalized - which evidence indicates they are having measurable success at. At the same time, masks and social distancing, while still being an imposition, are certainly less impactful on the economy than a complete shutdown.
Why do you feel the only solution is absolutely no restrictions? At this point, herd immunity has not shown much promise.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-17/sweden-proves-surprisingly-slow-in-achieving-herd-immunity
Sweden has made less progress than expected in achieving immunity to the coronavirus, according to its state epidemiologist.
After leaving schools, shops and restaurants open throughout the pandemic, contagion rates in Sweden are much higher than anywhere else in the Nordic region. Its Covid-19 mortality rate is among the worst in the world. Scientists have been eager to learn whether the flipside of widespread contagion is a higher level of
immunity.
But according to Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, “the trends in immunity have been surprisingly slow.” He also says “it’s difficult to explain why this is so.”
Granted we are still learning about immunity to this new disease, but at this point the evidence is indicative of no herd immunity until the vaccine is available. This is possibly due to the fact that this is a new virus, and our body doesn't know what to do with the antibodies.
Even worse, natural antibodies may actually worsen the impact:
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-antibodies-body-brain-damage-1516828
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may turn our antibodies against us so they attack the brain, according to a small study.
Researchers looked at 11 intensive care COVID-19 patients in two hospitals in Germany who had unexplained neurological problems. These included epileptic seizures, involuntary muscle jerking, nerve problems, issues moving their eyes, delirium, and uncontrollable muscle contractions. Symptoms were not caused by other conditions or their ICU treatment, the team said.
Granted, many of these studies are in the early stages. The point is doctors need time to figure this out. Stretching things via masks/social distancing is about the only method we have that still allows us to keep an operational economy.
