> Although some folks in this thread sound rather ready to sacrifice millions of people, for the sake of keeping the economy limping along...

That’s because they believe they are young and would fight off the virus with no problem. Change one of those variables and they will change their tune.

I can understand that it is prudent to take a worst case scenario here but it depends on how widespread this thing already is without us knowing it.

So Sweden has right now 1,639 confirmed cases with 16 deaths so far. There are some young people treated in critical care but so far it has been older people who has passed away, often with other diseases as well. Sweden currently only tests older people, people with severe symptoms, healthcare workers and similar personal and those who can work from home these days and travel is discouraged.

One expert estimated that we have around 100k infected in total right now and discussed that some things like shutting down schools for younger kids will have a large effect on society but not do that much on the spread of the virus. Instead you should focus on protecting vulnerable groups, stay home if you feel any symptoms of cold etc.

100k out of 10 million population would fit roughly with Iceland who did random sampling and found 1% of their population affected.

Of course he acknowledged that there is no way to know and taking extreme measures are better than taking too small but emotional/political reactions vs practical is really a discussion to be had.

Immediate aftermath of October Revolution was widespread death and famine. It was so bad that the communists introduced market capitalism again, called New Economic Policy.

The immediate aftermath of the October Revolution was actually five years of a civil war that killed ten million people, which was then capped off by a severe drought.