There are not a lot of other choices. The Netherlands is doing the same as other countries but our prime minister is more fair/ open about the virus.<p>Yes most people will get the virus anyway, anywhere. All measures are there to "flatten the curve". <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/13/815502262/flattening-a-pandemics-curve-why-staying-home-now-can-save-lives" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/13/8155022...</a><p>Netherlands has all the policies in place to flatten the curve. Work from home, schools closed, no big events. etc.<p>Its only fair that the prime minister says: everybody will get it. heck 50% to 75% of the cases are asymptomatic.
This "herd immunity" strategy is just a sophisticated form of denial. UK announced it on Thursday and abandoned it the following Monday.<p>It doesn't take into account the high hospitalisation rate and the fact that mortality is a function of hospital stress.
This is going to be one of the costliest panics in history.<p>A 1000 person test case was ran in isolation and they found this disease to not be very deathly, and this population was skewed toward the elderly.<p>Half the world’s population lives in a 2 hour flight away from Wuhan, and even without testing, there have been no random spikes in deaths especially considering most of that world is significantly poorer and without proper healthcare infrastructure.<p>The tragedy here isn’t about the immediate health impacts, of which are low, but of the second and third order effects to society and the world.<p>That office cleaning night crew ain’t getting paid. New tax revenues to fund potential research at universities isn’t raised. Those with still less fashionable diseases, will have even less money for their cause.
China has shown that it's possible to contain the virus even though they were initially criticized for it being "draconian".<p>They've capped out at under 100k cases (at least for the first wave) with 3k deaths: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_coronavirus_patients_in_China.svg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_coronavirus_patients...</a><p>Imagine if china had gone for the herd immunity strategy instead. With a population of 1.4billion and letting everyone get infected you are
looking at <i>42 million deaths</i>.<p>If draconian measures is what it takes, that is what the world should do.
It seems a lot of the media is focused on the fact that people are being exposed to the virus. However, the Dutch are adopting a controlled way of doing this while protecting those at risk. All measures to limit contact are in place, in a big departure from what others who claim "herd immunity" are doing.<p>Any comparison to the (previously?) British approach where in the weekend even concerts weren't cancelled and people are still being forced to go to the office by their employers doesn't quite hit the mark.
It's not yet clear to me if there's a difference between what Rutte proposed and the 'flatten the curve' strategy. Isn't it the same thing by a different name?<p>If that's the case then they're aiming for something better controlled than in the UK, where they seem to still be in denial.
Man, what a pickle.<p>Every country, every world leader, is faced with agonizing decisions. All are shades of right/wrong. All are simply trying to do the best job they can.<p>Not an easy time for anyone.