Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The number of likely undercounted and exposed looks many multiples of the undercounted dead.
It looks increasingly like viral load and co-morbidities are huge factors.
(Don't weigh in, Adder. If I have to explain it, I'm going to become wildly insulting. Now is not the time. Unlike you, I have to actually counsel people on reopening. Jerk off. Play chess. Busy yourself. I'm interested in what Ty thinks, not you.)
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The medical stuff is interesting because we're stuck at home and need to obsess about something. But if you're counseling people about reopening, I'm not sure what difference it makes. I don't see how we get anywhere near normal without much, much better and more widespread testing than we have now. We need to be able to identify community spread quickly and to shut it down with contact tracing. If we can't do that, then people are going to avoid social contact and the economy won't be back to normal. Trump continues to fuck up the federal government's management of testing, relative to just about every other country in the world, perhaps because he is more interested in helping donors profiteer from the crisis than in providing a public service. Sadly, the positive externalities from testing are huge, which means you need government to provide it because private industry is never going to have the right incentives.
Until we can test widely, figure out who is sick, isolate them, and track down anyone they may have infected, we're in a world of economic hurt.
