Originally Posted by
pfreet
It's useful to look at the IHME models that the health organizations and governments are using. Here is the US, but you can view other countries as well.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
The number of deaths get quite small as we get closer to summer. The following update from yesterday (April 17) is a really good read if you are interested:
COVID-19 estimation updates | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
We are now using estimates from our COVID-19 death models and estimates of infection fatality ratio (IFR) to produce estimates of COVID-19 incidence and prevalence. We then use these estimates to identify the date after which the number of COVID-19 infections is predicted to fall below 1 per 1,000,000 people in each location. This date can be viewed as the earliest time that locations could consider easing social distancing restrictions – conditional on containment measures already in place to avert potential resurgence of the virus. Such necessary containment efforts include extensive testing, robust contact tracing and isolation of new cases, and maintaining restrictions on mass gatherings of people.
We have chosen this threshold – 1 prevalent COVID-19 infection per 1,000,000 population – to represent a conservative estimate of the number of infections each location could reasonably try to identify via active case detection and contact tracing in order to prevent COVID-19 resurgence.
They then show rough dates for each state when this would occur. Mid May for California, first of June for Texas and New York.
This is the most interesting philosophical, ethical, political, religious, public policy debate, how any incremental deaths is acceptable to begin to relax. Unlike flu, car accidents, obesity, smoking etc. etc we've baked that risk into the general mindset as "acceptable" risk/cost for the convenience and living a "life" This pandemic mixes a lot of things, everyone and group has a opinion.
TO keep things restricted absolutely saves a few more lives while impacting so many more, what is that tradeoff?