Thread by @leashless

Here's my prediction. Young people will rapidly figure out that only old people are dying, and will proceed to get on with their lives. This will cause more old people to die, but #boomerremover peaked because young people with hard lives are incredibly ruthless, and they're poor

https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1239981253853507584

The "ruthless little bastards" model works like this: young people go to work, go to parties, get drunk and have fun. Middle aged people kick their kids out of the house, so they don't get infected, and then pass it to grandma. Grandma eventually gets it anyway, because #plague.

We'll get like two months, at most, of compliance, and then the young are going to sod the old, and - much as I don't like to say this - it'll be driven by the same inexorable Will to Live that let Cambodia recover from having 20% of their total population killed by Khmer Rouge.

Let me explain to you how tough human beings, as a species, are. By 1979, the Khmer Rouge had killed 20% of the Cambodian population. 40 years later, this is how Cambodian children look google.com/search?q=cambo…

How do they look? They look like children: happy, smiley, normal kids

Corona virus barely touches kids: it kills old people, and unfortunate young people. But it *really* kills old people. And, frankly, I'm old enough I do feel the fear of that. Yes I do.

But most of the folks in my life are a lot younger than me, and I feel little fear for them.

And for us, as a world, I feel no fear at all.

If this thing killed - as the 1918 flu did - the young and the strong, the people with the most powerful immune systems - then 1% total population mortality would be a hell of a blow.

But: this is not a threat of that kind. No way.

I don't think we have gotten the right model of this risk into our heads, at all. Not enough focus on the age vs. mortality graphs, not enough understanding of who is at risk.

By summer, I think young people will do as they like, and the old will have gone into deep retreat.

And this model - the old retreat to quarantine, and the young go out and run the world in their absence is what the *case fatality rate* data says to me.

I just don't see that much of a problem for fit people under 30. It's not their problem and they won't act like it is forever

I know people are just getting caught up to the OH MY GOD ITS A PANDEMIC stage, but as somebody who worked on *civilization collapsing pandemics* around 2010 guptaoption.com/6.SPRS.php I've gotta tell you, I am relieved.

Many people who are loved will die, but life will go on.

So I feel like the necessary course here, in about a month, is going to be a graceful separation of civilizations: the young and the resistant go back to raising their kids and running society, and the vulnerable (like me, alas) stay home and spend their days on the internet. :-(

It's a year or two of collective retirement from public life for anybody who's at risk from this beastie. I think that realistically we are going to have to fissure civilization between vulnerable and mostly-safe populations, and let the mostly-safe go back to living their lives.

In practice, that's probably going to mean designating areas as "no infection control zones" and moving the vulnerable people out of those areas, and turning them over to the young and the strong.

I am slightly envious. I only stopped being one of those people in my mind in 2017

We must face what people *actually going to do* when faced with 18 months of infection suppression, or have a horribly hard time maintaining infection suppression.

Young people who don't get really sick are not maintaining quarantine in summer. It's not happening. Plan for it.