Lets hurry up and infect everyone to get it over with...

I have seen this a lot all of a sudden, and quite frankly it boggles my mind, a quick google;

Fast facts on Us Hospitals

Did you know we only have about 930,000 beds in total in the US, I have read in different places that we could potentially see 2+ million dead from this virus.
If so boom we doubled the capacity of all the hospitals in the country, that's assuming all the dead were spread out evenly across the nation where all the hospitals are, and anyone thinking knows that's not how it works.

that 2+ million number isn't counting the people that are serious or critical but would recover with proper care, how are you going to get proper care when the hospital is already over loaded... oh and that's just pretending that no nurses doctors or any other specialist in the hospital doesn't get sick while treating all these dead and dying people, cause each time one of them goes down increases the load on others and weakens their ability to treat the sick.

Dont forget high levels of stress can lead to a weakened immune response speeding up the loss of qualified medical personnel increasing the work load and then the stress of those that remain. Then their will be PTSD for those medical people that survived this time, how many will want to stay in medicine after having to wade through the dead and dying for days in an over loaded hospital.

Good luck finding medical care after everything has run its course, I doubt there would be many medical professionals left.

now what about the people with other health issues that require hospitalization, what about little suzy got into the cleaning supplies and now needs her stomach pumped, what about big tom driving the 18 wheeler with supplies for your local Walmart having a heart attack, because I guarantee all 930,000 beds are not open and ready for patients right now.

That doesn't even touch on the moral aspect of saying F it lets write off a significant section of our population because they are not convenient right now.

Now I freely admit that we may end up with a crushed health care system anyway, and maybe we could lessen the economic impact if we hurried up and infected everyone helping to make recovery easier.

But what will be left of our soul if we throw away people because they are not convenient, are you ready to look at your grand parents, and parents and say you had a good run bye, I am not I still have things to learn from them and they still need to see their grand kids grow.

I could probably go on, but I see I am turning kinda preachy so if you only take 1 thing from my ramblings take the simple fact we dont have the bed space to handle infecting everyone and getting it over with without destroying health care for decades, sheltering to spread the hit is the better path till a new and better path shows itself.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Yes, everything you say is correct. We are ill prepared morally, socially, economically, structurally to deal with what has come upon us so quickly. The last forty years of aggressive selfish business and banking behavior, the lust for real estate and the abandonment of everything truly socially important have made us very weak. In Britain we don't even have enough surgical masks for our health workers, no testing kits, terrible and greedy behaviour, the list goes on.

I don't know what else to say but we our our own worst enemies. They thought they were clever to abuse the human race so. Now we are all, rich and poor, in a mess. We will have to ride this storm now as best we can.

The best course of action for me is to be as altruistic and compassionate as I can be and I will put others first. I have always tried to be like that anyway, but the world metaphorically crucified me for being gentle and caring.

Please stay safe everyone and love your neighbour as you do yourself and we will be 90% over this crisis just by doing that.

a reply to: Irishhaf

It would be better to end this sooner than later.

So.. Now i am going to walk out from my house, and pick up candy and beer,
not because i need it, but because i choose to want it.

And don`t worry, if i get sick, i will not go to the hospital, or seek medical help, so i am not robbing little Suzy of the care she could possibly need.

Gather them up and take them to stadiums in the respective states and Euthanize them.... Is something that would never be said or proposed. See how that misdirection Click Bait works. Nature will take it's toll and peoples refusal to heed medical directions to self quarantine will take care of the rest.
And because of them, collateral damage.

It's also scary for older folks. Such as people who had cancer and have weak immune systems from chemotherapy.

Not only will hospitals be overloaded if we aren't careful but the old and weaker bodied people will take a huge loss.

Im sure most young and middle-aged could ride it out, but they could easily spread it to those who can't.

Strange time we are living in. ..

a reply to: Irishhaf

Considering we have heard of cases of re-infection. There may be no such thing as herd immunity.

Certainly has not helped with the common cold.

a reply to: infolurker

Yup and till we have more solid information rushing to break the system seems like insanity to me.

Yet some still think its a good idea, scary.

a reply to: infolurker

The common cold is different. It's not the same disease twice. Sometime, it's even a strain of coronavirus. It mutates quickly, but the reason it doesn't kill and isn't serious is because our bodies are familiar with it. Our immune systems have seen it (in a previously mutated form) before. Sure, we get sick, but it's almost always mild unless we have something else going on.

Common cold is an umbrella term really.

This is a completely new strain to humans that has previously never circulated. Eventually, it will take its place with all those other seasonal illnesses under the cold umbrella term in all likelihood, but right now, it's rough going.

Most people who get this and fight it off won't get it again except for possibly a mutant strain in a year or three like we always do.

The logic is not correct. The math is, but not the logic. That assumes all 330 million of us get seriously ill at the same time requiring hospitalization which as far as I know has never happened in all of human history. No matter what the condition, not everyone in our country is going to get infected and only a small percentage will ever be serious at any given time. You can't provide one bed for every person and maintain that, it would be foolish and a tremendous waste of resources. Not to mention it would be impossible to staff. What if's don't apply in this situation.

a reply to: HalWesten

The WHO claims 40-70% will get the virus, lets run with the low number that's 132 million in the US alone, as of March 3rd WHO said a 3.4% mortality rate is 4.4 million people.
Obviously that rate wont be maintained as more number comes in so for the moment lets drop it to the 2 million I mentioned earlier.

If we stop shelter in place and try to do business as normal right now with the information we have especially watching how fast Italy has imploded, why should we expect a different spread rate?

You are correct that obviously everyone wont die at once, but the trend has shown us that those who will die get sick fast, some go form sick to dead faster than others but when high risk people check in with illness they will be hospitalized fast and as already covered we have the beds for 924000 people total that includes accident patients, and other illnesses as well.

So where exactly in my post was the logic wrong?

seems to me that people don't really understand what herd immunity really is, it's not something that just magically happens when large numbers of people get infected by a virus, it's just a way that describes how a group of vaccinated people protects others in the group who are not vaccinated from getting infected by a virus.

it requires a vaccine or treatment first so everyone getting infected would just kill off the weak and leave the survivors with permanent lung and heart damage, this isn't chicken pox.

a reply to: Irishhaf

The last place I'd want to go if I had it would be a hospital, I'm no goin to hospital wae bad cold to leave with MRSA.

we dont have the bed space to handle infecting everyone and getting it over with without destroying health care for decades

We don't, but the rest of your post assumes the absolute worst-case scenario which won't happen. I absolutely agree that we should do everything we can to prevent the spread, I will never disagree with that. But the doomsday proposition won't happen because we are not THAT stupid.