Good piece.
The author wrote, “Our obsession with watching the curve overvalues its certainty.”
Yes; and particularly important to realize is that if the “curve flattens” or starts going down, it does not mean that we are “past the disease”.
If we start going out again, the curve will hockey stick right back up.
This disease will only pass once one of the following happens:
- We all get it, and therefore most of us have some immunity.
- We develop treatment that reduces the R factor, so that spread slows drastically, and — even more important — the fatality rate drops to seasonal flu levels. (People die from the flu too.)
- We develop and distribute a vaccine.
Until one of those occurs, nothing will change.
Perhaps instead of everyone isolating, we should identify those who are most at risk, and help them to isolate. Perhaps instead of sending $1200 to everyone, subsidize the rent/mortgage of only those who meet the vulnerability criteria. We now have a-lot of data on who tends to succumb, and the data is getting better all the time. Let everyone else go back to work. That way our economy will not be crippled, and we will be strong enough to fight this thing — and be ready for the next, because there will be a next.
