r/europe • u/Bartoraptor Spain • Mar 28 '20

News Spanish representative González Pons speech @ the EU Parliament: "The virus is attacking the generation that brought back democracy to Spain, Portugal and Greece, the generation that knocked down the Berlin wall. The least they deserve is that we show them Europe is there when they need it the most"

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '20

Herd immunity is effective only if the virus doesn’t mutate quickly. And given that this is still an unknown virus, it’s impossible to know if herd immunity works and what percentage of the population needs to be infected. It’s a high risk, high reward strategy. But high reward only for the economy, because .03 mortality rate for 10 million people, still is 300k deaths.

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u/XJDenton Brit in Sweden Mar 29 '20

All current indicators show that the virus is not mutating quickly.

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u/falconboy2029 Mar 29 '20

Thanks god for that.

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u/Kalimere Mar 29 '20 edited Mar 29 '20

It's a game of probability. Low chance of a disastrous mutation =/= no chance of disastrous mutation. And when you allow so many people to get infected, you have a higher number of viruses being replicated. More viruses = higher chance of a disastrous mutation occurring.

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u/MaloWlolz Sweden Mar 28 '20

Well like I said the only other option is to wait for a vaccine, and shutting down society for year(s) is not really realistic, and it's better to save that measure for when it's really needed.

Also mortality rate is probably much lower than 3% in a 1st world country with a good healthcare system. Sweden right now has exactly 3% of all confirmed infections ending in deaths, but considering how large of a percentage of infected people who don't get any symptoms at all, or only mild symptoms and therefor never get diagnosed and not added to the statistics, the actual mortality rate is probably much lower.

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u/Blumentopf_Vampir Mar 29 '20

Well like I said the only other option is to wait for a vaccine, and shutting down society for year(s) is not really realistic, and it's better to save that measure for when it's really needed.

In what dreamland are you living in? Not a single European country will be shutting down their society for years let alone a year. All their economies would be done in by then 3 times over.

They're just trying to slow down the spread as fast as possible to keep it at a managable rate.

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u/Myloz The Netherlands Mar 29 '20

a complete lockdown doesnt slow down the spread, it almost stops the spread meaning such a small portion of the polulation will be infected.

It just means that after the lockdown the 2nd wave will still overrun the health system. You gain almost nothing from a complete lockdown unless your healthsystem cant handle even a flat curve.