
Ask HN: Are people considering Corona parties (a.k.a. Pox parties)? - aaron695
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pox_party<p>It would allow much safer control measures for yourself and the community rather than something that&#x27;s predicted by some to happen at a 70% chance at a random time.
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tobltobs
It is astonishing that even on a side like hn people are not capable of
understanding some simple maths.

10% of infected persons need intensive care including ventilation.

The US has 100k intensive care unit beds. About 90% are already occupied.

If only 10% get infected at the same time, the health system will be totally
overwhelmed.

If 30% get it at the same time, millions will be left dying.

I am missing the words to describe the stupidity of a Corona party.

~~~
ekr
It is astonishing that even on HN there are these style of insulting / ad-
hominem / reddit-style answers to a honest inquiry.

You conclusion about people understanding math is unfounded, maybe OP doesn't
have the data, maybe that's simply not the concern of the question. (and even
you are making a hidden argument for getting infected now, whilst hospital
beds are still available, rather than later).

Again, if written in good faith, there are no stupid questions, and ad-
hominems like yours have no place on HN.

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molmalo
That would be a terrible idea at best and a recipe for disaster at worst. The
idea right now is to reduce the rate of transmission, so the health system can
cope with the demand, as 20% of the cases will require hospitalization.

Throwing this kind of parties would do the opposite, saturating the health
system and thus, increasing the death rate.

Sorry, but it's the worst idea I've heard in a while, by far.

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zxcmx
I work in a huge, open plan, hot desked office, take crowded public transport
(so close that everyone is touching at peak) and have kids that go to 2
different daycares.

My life, almost every day of it, is basically a massive "pox party". I am not
considering formalising the arrangement at this time :/

~~~
jmnicolas
My n+1 had difficulties to breath, headache and cough this morning but came
"just one hour" at work for this "important meeting" ...

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bitwarden
The point of a pox party is to get the children sick while young, so they
don't get sick with the same disease in the future. You can re-contract the
coronavirus so there is no point in doing this.

~~~
Jefro118
I don't think this is correct. There were some indications earlier on that
some people can get Covid-19 more than once but the cases appear to have been
relapses rather than being infected more than once.

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0x1221
No. Infecting large numbers of people at the same time is the exact opposite
of what everyone is trying to achieve.

~~~
forkexec
"Everyone" isn't a sane and rational monolith. There are crazy and
psychopathic people.

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jka
Self-infecting to 'get through it' is an individualistic approach for those
outside the risk groups and will appeal to different degrees based on cultural
norms and government policies in different countries.

It risks creating a higher transmission rate - initially for the individual
and their community, and then across wider populations - and that could
overwhelm health services, leading to insufficient care coverage and
ultimately unnecessary harm & deaths.

Developing herd immunity is a useful eventual population-wide goal but it
mustn't be rushed since the virus can require intensive care and have fatal
consequences for at-risk groups.

Unvaccinated chicken pox has a fatality rate less than 0.01% for children and
0.02% for adults[0][1] while COVID-19 has been estimated anywhere between 1%
and 5% and is certainly higher than that for those in older age[2].

It is these higher fatality rates for at-risk populations which make the idea
of intentionally spreading the virus dangerous to the community due to their
potential to increase load on health services.

It might be sensible and responsible to re-title this post to 'Warn HN:
Discourage Corona parties'. There's also some risk involved by spreading
awareness of the idea of a Corona party, unfortunately.

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fatality_rates)

[1] -
[https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/varicella.html](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/varicella.html)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Progn...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Prognosis)

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encima
There are also some cases of people getting the illness again so it seems like
there is little benefit to this idea.

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anfilt
This is a bad idea. The virus is still pretty new so lots of unknowns like it
may be dormant after infection in certain body parts. Also considering the 1
to 2% death rate seems highly risky. Plus a higher percentage needing
intensive care and monitoring. Moreover, there are reports of second
infections so it may not even inoculate that well against a second infection.
So it's just risky with so many unknowns.

Moreover, we are not even sure this virus will be around next year. Unlike
chicken pox before the vaccine was made the reasoning was if you caught it as
an adult it could be quite dangerous. While this virus is especially dangerous
to elderly. Depending on your age it could be decades before your in that risk
category. We surely will have a vaccine or better treatment by then, so again
just taking risk with no real benefit.

Not only that this is likely to increase spread of the virus unless your
properly quarantined. This just a bad bad idea with how little we know and the
possibility of a vaccine on the horizon.

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tomjen3
I am in Denmark. There was a time where that might have made sense, but when
they shut down the country late Wednesday, that stopped being an option.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else either.

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kohtatsu
I think it's possible you remain contagious for more than a couple weeks (I
read 6 way back when); the 14 day period is just to see if you have symptoms
and need testing.

As long as nobody is above 40(?), and there are no underlying conditions like
bronchitis, or immunodeficiency, maybe it wouldn't be a terrible idea. But you
need to be ready to quarantine everyone until tests come back negative, and
then there are false negatives, and it becomes a widespread think idea I'm
sure people will mistakenly get their moms involved without realizing how
dangerous it is for older people.

Also where did you get 70%? I give myself a 0-5% chance with some decent
social distancing.

~~~
tobltobs
> maybe it wouldn't be a terrible idea.

It is a terribly stupid idea.

Our only hope is too flatten the curve.

~~~
kohtatsu
Yeah, I don't think this is an approach we could take because laymen would try
it. But as a thought experiment I don't think this is mutually exclusive with
flattening the curve.

If you could guarantee a group of people would be part of the mild cold
symptoms (~80%), it would be nice to have them get it, isolate and monitor,
and let their bodies develop the immunity.

They would no longer be able to spread it to more vulnerable people.

It's just like a vaccine, but riskier.

But beyond all that, I now remember there's evidence the virus might be doing
permanent damage.

So definitely don't do this. Even if you could quarantine for 10 weeks or
whatever.

~~~
felixworks
This strategy could be helpful for future pandemics, if more governments
learned to be much more proactive about public health. In other words, we can
forget about this strategy.

