I'm tired of the people who are demanding we all stay confined to our house indefinitely. I've seen tons of buzz on twitter that seems to think leaving with a mask and practicing social distancing is akin to murder. Suggesting that there's a responsible way to resume some activity with appropriate caution is viewed as reckless and inhumane.

Has anyone tried quantifying the human cost of house confinement? If people are so concerned about the risk of not leaving, I think we need to start putting hard numbers around what these draconian measures are costing us. There is a cost and it's not even clear that have a good grasp of what it is. Outside of the human cost, there's major precedents and political ramifications.

Are we entering a world where we'll constantly do similar hysterics around trendlines of deaths and micromanaging policy? Clearly preventable, chronic disease is a far more potent killer but less visible since it happens over a long time period.

I blame the media for this. And I don’t just mean during this pandemic, but for the past couple decades (and especially from 2015 onward.) Dividing the audience is good for business.

I really enjoyed the book Hate Inc by Matt Taibbi that examines this phenomenon.

Dividing the country also prevents real progress and preserves the status quo.

Yea it's bewildering. Even the science community on twitter seems to being eating itself alive. It's like people have lost the capacity to engage in discourse without immediately questioning motives and allegiances.

I would like to point out that in April 30th NASA will be announcing the commercial human lander awards.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-commerci...

Several politicians from the current US administration share the opinion to open up.

Maybe mr Musk would like to open up the economy. Maybe he does believe that's for the better, for the economy. Is that right? My understanding is that it is not, but I'm no epidemiologist.

Is he biased? Probably! Does a CEO waiting for a federal organization to announce if his company will win a contract from NASA looks OK when he doesn't wait a couple of days to tweet such a controversial tweet?

I don't think so.

Look at poor countries such as India, over 140 million people face destitution because the economy is closed. Its either death from hunger or covid-19, and I bet a lot of them would gladly take their chances with the virus. [1]

Lockdown is a luxury only the rich countries can afford in the first place, I don't think it makes sense for everyone. Whether Musk is right or not in the American context, will be determined by the end of next winter when the final body count is tallied.

[1]. https://www.ft.com/content/dec12470-894b-11ea-9dcb-fe6871f41...

It's not their chances it's the chances for everyone around the world

I couldn't care less about him, I'm more concerned about what his fan club will do.

In the UK here, I have heard the bed occupancy is low because people are afraid to go to the emergency room out of fear of catching COVID. So there are typically a number of people who die every month. Then you have the number who have died of COVID. But now they have a larger than expected people die of non-COVID. Question is do these extras die of COVID but not tested or the fear of COVID and not getting help.

As for Elon Musk, and most famous people, I treat there opinions with no more credibility than I do the grocer or the shoe shine. Just because some media person decides to repeat your words does not make it right.

Of course if I see it on Hacker News thats a different story ... Not that it is more accurate, but it will be better vetted. Others will chime in with counter opinion. Its not a one way street.

>His proof is very limited, mostly hospital bed ocupancy being way bellow the predicted values.

First, one question would be that maybe hospital bed occupancy being way bellow the predicted values is because measures were taken.

Similar to saying "The military is useless because nobody is attacking us" or "See? It wasn't necessary to vaccinate everyone. Nobody has polio in hospitals!"

Second, the measures can be seen as too strict in retrospective. However, nobody wants to have a retrospective of lackadaisical measures that lead to many more deaths. In other words, when in doubt is it sane to roll the dice. Is it better to say "sorry, I pushed you because I saw the driver lose control and kill ten people already" or "sorry, I shrugged it off and now you're dead". Overzealous measures can be taken down a few notches. It can be hard to recover, especially with loss of employment, but loss of life is harder to recover from.. The consequences of lax measures lead to irrecoverable and irreversible states.

Third, it would have been over-reacting if there were only one country dealing with it and there were no data, but I don't think it's easy not to over-react when you see countries that were hit really hard, even with no real data.

I've got more respect for him after those tweets

It's not like the first time [1] when he almost got in prison for fraud last two years

1:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102923