Re: [Avid-L2] Ot, about the current madness, stay away if you don't like it.

OT

On Apr 10, 2020, at 10:51 AM, bouke <bouke@editb.nl> wrote:

'Flatten the curve is about decreasing the infection rate, so medical care can keep up with demand.

It has NOTHING to do with 'staying safe',

Sure it does. Staying safe is how you flatten the curve. If I stay safe, I flatten the curve for society. If society flattens the curve, it becomes easier for me to stay safe because the risk of exposure is reduced. It's a feedback loop. 

The experts didn't pull this out of their ass. The empirical data for the last two decades shows that this strategy reduces overall death. It does this by buying time for society to muster resources to fight back. For some, this accomplishes nothing. They died yesterday. For others, it might delay death due to Covid-19 until they die of cancer (my father). Almost all medicine is about buying time, time for your body to muster resources to fight the threat and rebuild a healthy system. In this case, it's about buying society time to do the same thing.

At the moment, death is 100% certain. The goal is to die later, rather than sooner.

Cheers,

                tod