On Thursday, August 20, 2020 at 4:44:45 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Thu, 20 Aug 2020 15:13:46 -0400,
wrote:

On Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:44:26 -0400, wrote:

So are you suggesting our attempt (and success) at flattening the curve was
unnecessary? No matter how steeply the curve climbed our medical system could
have handled it? That's bull**** and you know it.

I just wonder how little we really needed to do to accomplish that.

Of course if you are right, we could still have been at the gym, disco
or Easter services if we just had a mask. :-)

===

In the absence of an effective vaccine or treatment it will take a
combination of actions to keep this thing under control. Mask
wearing, social distancing and avoidance of high risk behavior can all
help with that. People who refuse out of some misguided notion should
be subjected to peer pressure since the govrnment can't be everywhere
and peer pressure is probably more effective.

It certainly is becoming apparent that the only way to open is to get
some form of immunity and without an effective vaccine, that comes by
people surviving the infection.
You can try to sugar coat it but that is the reality.
New Zealand got a lesson last week. One guy potentially infected a
couple hundred people (I haven't seen the real number of infections
but something like 280 were quarantined) in spite of sealing the
borders of the country. There was no immunity so one stray case
rippled through everyone he met and the people who met him met.

If he had been wearing a mask and was social distancing, that number of infected people may have been 7 instead of 280.