I bet you're sitting in your house right now. Debating whether going out is both safe and appropriate. Maybe you're saving yourself until you need to stock up on food or deodorant. Maybe your hair is starting to show more gray at the roots. You're probably as stir crazy your kids.
How many times have you thought I'm healthy, strong, the flu hardly ever hits me? Why am I stuck at home? And then you think, I'm doing this for that senior couple two doors down, or maybe the family with the child who is disabled and vulnerable, or maybe the friend who's on chemo for her cancer.
But, them you look out the window and there goes seven or eight teenagers, boys and girls, aiming for the path in the forest, all within inches, giggling, bumping, swatting each other. The first thought, I bet, is those kids are not socially distancing, second thought, their parents will be so pissed if they all get sick, probably serves them right. Maybe your next thought is China and Singapore know how to do this. Those kids would be in deep s#$t there.
Well I believe you might be thinking wrong. Maybe these kids kind of have the right idea. Albeit, they're kids so they don't have it completely right. But they walk like they own the world and no badness can befall them. They are partly correct. This virus doesn't really harm most of them. This virus has a predilection for the old, the infirm.
So, "What's the point Dan?" you ask. The point is we are using the blunted weapon to fight this virus. We're going to use a 16 penny nail to hold this soap bubble to the wall. Well, how well is that going to work. My point is, we created a global stay at home order. Everyone, all ages needs to follow the very simple rules, Don't leave home except for absolutely essential reasons. You can go out for food, doctor visits, gasoline, a visit to the hardware store but beware if you want a hair cut, a new shirt, maybe a car wash, you better not or you'll get Corona and infect us all.
Is it just me or is there something wrong here? You can be 80 and go to the store to buy milk but if your 18 beware of a walk with your friends. I am probably a fool but I just don't see how this works. Sure, right now we isolate the virus maby five percent of us gets the virus, fifteen million, one percent of those die, one hundred fifty thousand. But, the virus isn't gone and we are nowhere close to the ninety-five percent herd immunity. So what's your reading list for November when this thing takes a second swing at us?
The real answer is to shoot for about the same mortality risk, one hundred fifty thousand, but a much higher rate of exposure to the population so when those elderly or frail individuals leave their homes they're safe. The only way to achieve this is smart quarantining. We aggressively isolate the high risk groups. We put our vast government resources into bringing food and healthcare to them. We have our younger healthy population out interacting, getting the corona virus and going nowhere near the vulnerable population. Society kind of moves forward.
Perhaps we institute some harsh terms. No children see grandparents for a while, at least until either the virus stops circling in our community or we have a viable vaccine. Most of us go to work. Yes, some of us who shouldn't die do. But right now there is no guarantee against this anyway.
I expect most everyone will disagree with me. I'm not saying it's a great idea. But good luck corraling a bunch of teenage to twenty somethings. Until you do every time a senior or someone immune compromised walks into a grocery store it's like Russian roulette.
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