Item — HN Reader

I guess the operative detail is whether shelter-in-place will get us to a "23%" total infection rate vs 70%.

I wonder if that's accurate. I also wonder if this is recurring in the fall, and every year, and whether physical distancing will be mandatory every year?

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How many recurrent seasons would it take for countries/society to adapt and cope (whether that's hugely more full-time remote workers, or blanket acceptability of it part-time/during such occasions, or something else) I wonder?

If you expect it to spread at the rate this thing spreads, after a couple of years nearly everyone will have been exposed to it and thus have developed an immunity (or died). From then on it mostly becomes a childhood disease, like measles. The goal thus becomes to spread out the exposures enough so that people who need medical help to survive their exposure can reliably get it.

Of course the above assumes that immunity really does develop after one exposure, and that the virus doesn't mutate into some sufficiently different form to reset the immunity counter to zero again. The evidence seems to indicate positive things on the immunity front, but it's still preliminary. And as for mutation, who can say?

Just one I think. People are already coping, and it's barely started. If people knew a 3 month shelter-in-place was a yearly rule, we could plan for it.

People with either cushy office jobs or enough savings to be long-term unemployed are coping. The millions of service industry employees either aren’t, or soon won’t be.

I would assume there would be changes to how unemployment works if this was a regular thing.

The problem is that those changes are highly politicized, because they hit a bunch of culture war buttons about "socialism".

And it's been a while since American legislators have considered the possibility of torches and pitchforks, so they still prioritize their electability (especially in the primaries, where ideological purism is more important) over social necessity.

Hey - admin of covidactnow here. I don't think anyone has any idea if this will recur, mutate, etc.

The key is to buy time, now. To add hospital capacity, develop therapeutics and vaccines, and learn more about the disease...