
“Flattening the Curve” is a deadly delusion - senderista
https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-deadly-delusion-eea324fe9727
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jshevek
> _They suggest that currently, the medical system can deal with a large
> fraction (like maybe 2 /3, 1/2 or 1/3) of the cases, but if we implement
> some mitigation measures, we can get the infections per day down to a level
> we can deal with._

I never took it this way. I always thought the point was "slowing down the
disease saves some lives, even if the same number of people eventually get
infected." That's it. Nothing more.

> _They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns as we
> are currently observing them in China and Italy. Instead, we let the
> infection burn through the entire population, until we have herd immunity
> (at 40% to 70%), and just space out the infections over a longer timespan._

The diagram says nothing about lockdowns. The diagram doesn't promise us we
will fully flatten the curve, but demonstrates the life savings benefits of
flattening as much as we can.

In my opinion, we should also prepare for temporary lockdowns.

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benmaraschino
Unfortunately, this is a really bad analysis, because, for one, the author
assumes in his model that the total number of infections won't change as the
result of greater social distancing. But distancing will have an effect on the
number of infections, and this effect is in fact quite substantial. For
example, the results of this model suggest a ~80% reduction in total infection
burden with a 50% reduction in the rate of transmission, and nearly 95% with a
75% reduction:
[https://twitter.com/IDMOD_ORG/status/1237881591784865793](https://twitter.com/IDMOD_ORG/status/1237881591784865793)

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viraptor
And even IF the number of infections didn't change and we spread the
infections over 2x time rather than 1x, it will literally save lives. Once you
have that outcome available with a relatively small effort... why wouldn't you
do it?

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robocat
Fairly dumb...

1\. Flattening the curve obviously improves the situation (even if it doesn’t
solve it),

2\. Containment would have to last as long as the curve might last: just not
practical,

3\. Look to Taiwan: so far they _are_ successfully dealing with the emergency
the best out of any country.

That said, as much delay as we can get at beginning of the curve is excellent:
we want as much time as we can get for our scientists and health systems to
discover mitigations, to build up relevant industrial capacity, and to build
out health systems support. A lot of lives can be saved with a few lucky
discoveries.

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jshevek
> _Flattening the curve obviously improves the situation (even if it doesn’t
> solve it)_

Yes. The criticism feels like Nirvana fallacy to me. Let's aspire to flatten
the curve, it will make everything less bad, even if we don't fully succeed.

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aaron695
It's right about the curve memes being wrong, but I don't like the conclusion.

I've seen estimations of 5 years to flatten the curve for a few countries.

And I've yet to see hospitals capacity drop over winter, they are seasonal.

Add to this there is only so long the operations they are delaying can be
delayed.

And I've yet to see the hospitals capacity drop as the staff gets destroyed.

The curves are giving a false sense of security and downplaying the large
effects of dragging this out, flattening or containing.

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mytailorisrich
Flattening the curve is what everyone is trying to do and it obviously helps.

The issue is that for example the UK have said that they want to flatten the
curve to protect the health services while also wanting to build herd immunity
rapidly, perhaps by the end of the year.

These are mutually exclusive.

Either drastic measures are taken to flatten the curve a lot, or the health
services will collapse and many people in serious condition won't receive any
treatment at all.

