Are people considering Corona parties (a.k.a. Pox parties)?

It is astonishing that even on a side like hn people are not capable of understanding some simple maths.

10% of infected persons need intensive care including ventilation.

The US has 100k intensive care unit beds. About 90% are already occupied.

If only 10% get infected at the same time, the health system will be totally overwhelmed.

If 30% get it at the same time, millions will be left dying.

I am missing the words to describe the stupidity of a Corona party.

That would be a terrible idea at best and a recipe for disaster at worst. The idea right now is to reduce the rate of transmission, so the health system can cope with the demand, as 20% of the cases will require hospitalization.

Throwing this kind of parties would do the opposite, saturating the health system and thus, increasing the death rate.

Sorry, but it's the worst idea I've heard in a while, by far.

I work in a huge, open plan, hot desked office, take crowded public transport (so close that everyone is touching at peak) and have kids that go to 2 different daycares.

My life, almost every day of it, is basically a massive "pox party". I am not considering formalising the arrangement at this time :/

The point of a pox party is to get the children sick while young, so they don't get sick with the same disease in the future. You can re-contract the coronavirus so there is no point in doing this.

No. Infecting large numbers of people at the same time is the exact opposite of what everyone is trying to achieve.

Self-infecting to 'get through it' is an individualistic approach for those outside the risk groups and will appeal to different degrees based on cultural norms and government policies in different countries.

It risks creating a higher transmission rate - initially for the individual and their community, and then across wider populations - and that could overwhelm health services, leading to insufficient care coverage and ultimately unnecessary harm & deaths.

Developing herd immunity is a useful eventual population-wide goal but it mustn't be rushed since the virus can require intensive care and have fatal consequences for at-risk groups.

Unvaccinated chicken pox has a fatality rate less than 0.01% for children and 0.02% for adults[0][1] while COVID-19 has been estimated anywhere between 1% and 5% and is certainly higher than that for those in older age[2].

It is these higher fatality rates for at-risk populations which make the idea of intentionally spreading the virus dangerous to the community due to their potential to increase load on health services.

It might be sensible and responsible to re-title this post to 'Warn HN: Discourage Corona parties'. There's also some risk involved by spreading awareness of the idea of a Corona party, unfortunately.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...

[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/varicella.html

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Progn...

There are also some cases of people getting the illness again so it seems like there is little benefit to this idea.

This is a bad idea. The virus is still pretty new so lots of unknowns like it may be dormant after infection in certain body parts. Also considering the 1 to 2% death rate seems highly risky. Plus a higher percentage needing intensive care and monitoring. Moreover, there are reports of second infections so it may not even inoculate that well against a second infection. So it's just risky with so many unknowns.

Moreover, we are not even sure this virus will be around next year. Unlike chicken pox before the vaccine was made the reasoning was if you caught it as an adult it could be quite dangerous. While this virus is especially dangerous to elderly. Depending on your age it could be decades before your in that risk category. We surely will have a vaccine or better treatment by then, so again just taking risk with no real benefit.

Not only that this is likely to increase spread of the virus unless your properly quarantined. This just a bad bad idea with how little we know and the possibility of a vaccine on the horizon.

I am in Denmark. There was a time where that might have made sense, but when they shut down the country late Wednesday, that stopped being an option.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else either.

I think it's possible you remain contagious for more than a couple weeks (I read 6 way back when); the 14 day period is just to see if you have symptoms and need testing.

As long as nobody is above 40(?), and there are no underlying conditions like bronchitis, or immunodeficiency, maybe it wouldn't be a terrible idea. But you need to be ready to quarantine everyone until tests come back negative, and then there are false negatives, and it becomes a widespread think idea I'm sure people will mistakenly get their moms involved without realizing how dangerous it is for older people.

Also where did you get 70%? I give myself a 0-5% chance with some decent social distancing.