Social isolation is a good strategy if it allows you to eradicate the virus. Unfortunately it did not work so far and you have the virus all around the world. How long are you ready to apply social isolation. If you want to contain the number of ill people in the US to 20000 and lets say on average people are sick one week. Then it takes 100 years of social isolation until you get immunity on 100’000’000 people. Simply impossible to apply.
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A vaccine will not be available for months. With the current speed of transmission and spread, it will come to late. That’s why it’s important to flatten the curve - to be able to treat as many cases as possible until we have a vaccine.
The writer is correct in that we need containment measures - which European nations have been slow to adopt. He’s also right that we can’t rely on simply flattening the curve. But labeling that concept a “delusion” or a “lie” is hogwash.
“They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns”
There aren’t many people or nations believing that. Or won’t be anymore, soon. Germany and the UK and the president of the European Commission seems to have taken that stance - but have or will be rather soon reverse course.
With a low R0, it would also stop spreading. Anyway we can look at China who’s trying that experiment, they had 14 new confirmed cases in last 24 hours (WHO numbers), afaik all or most of them are imported. They’re also trying to get people back to work in some areas.
It’s likely that life will change for a while (less contacts, better hygiene, regular tests) until we have a vaccine and/or effective treatments, will have to see how to keep the economy running while containing the virus during that time.
@San_Francisco agreed we need to flatten the curve, and it’s nice because it’s a message that’s easy to understand for most people. IMO what the article I posted points out is that if the number of infected people is the same (the area of the curve is identical) that won’t really solve things (since the curve would be spread over years), we need the area to shrink as well which social distancing measure seem to be effective at (see the wp infographics), until we have a vaccine or other solutions.
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This guy shows data for US, where they have low number of beds, compared to many European countries, but sure, I get his point.
It worked in China. It seems to work in South Korea. We just didn’t take as drastic measures as China did.
It seems that the herd immunity strategy might cause the overload of the healthcare system and the death of many people, or else it could take very long to adapt.
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There’s a difference, but not order of magnitude:
acute care beds per 1k
- US: 2.4
- germany: 6.0
- switzerland: 3.6
- italy 2.6
Not sure about total hospital beds, but I assume it’s a similar story.
If you speak German and have the time and interest, this German doctor launched a very interesting podcast on the topic:
Germany is closing the borders by tomorrow.
Baselland closes all stores by tomorrow.
It’s happening. Europe will enter full lockdown mode now.
Poland announced it already on thursday.
In other news: this thread exceeded 1000 replies, and to think I have read them all…
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And you have written post n. 1’000 ! 
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nabalzbhf is actually post 1000
Strange, when I scroll my browser it displays 1’000 on Bojack’s post, but if I click on the chain to share it it’s considered as 1’009…
maybe it’s due to some thread split…
Ah yes, I did split one thread out. And maybe it also counts deletes differently? In any case, it looks like it’s a hard to establish achievement 
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The thing on the left is probably counting the items in an array or a select query, while the share button is getting the ID of the post.
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They don‘t really close borders…
FED cut rates to zero and launches 700 billion QE program, holy cow!
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Looks like a rough week ahead, both in terms of corona and market swings
Weekend DOW from -4% to -1% now
edit: +1% a few minutes later
BAG reports we have 2200 positive tests and 1560 confirmed cases. Can someone explain to me how is it possible that we got a 63% increase in one day?
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More people being tested, probably caused by the realisation that this is not just a flu.
BTW thank you all for this wonderful thread, once the storm has passed it will stand high on the wall of fame 
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„One concern we have with cases such as U.K. and Switzerland isn’t just about the numbers. It is that these countries have abandoned any measure to contain or restrain the virus“