Short description: (Empty)

Long description: The idea is that we reduce the rate of infection through the population which spreads out the time of the pandemic but, most critically, the number of sick at any one time. The rationale for this is that it is very costly to have a high number of sick people at one time. This goes for providing essential economic services but, as this diagram shows, it is really all about health care system capacity. As Italy has shown us, people die essentially because they cannot get hospital-level care. If the infection rate is too high, health care capacity becomes quickly overwhelmed and doctors have to engage in triage, a word which now means choosing who will live and who will die.

Source: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/flattening-the-coronavirus-curve-is-not-enough/

Used in the Frictionary of: 2020

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