Look, it literally doesn’t matter what you plan is.
There are thousands of highly trained individuals who have spent every minute of their working lives thinking about this, examining every possible scenario, all feasible responses, and multitudes of circumstances.
No random untrained individual on the internet can come up with a plan that they haven’t already thought of, and either put into effect, or dismissed or postponed for good reasons. The chances of your brainstorm being better than their accumulated thousands of years of experience and expertise is exactly zero.
Same thing goes for random untrained posters who think they’ve found a hole in quantum mechanics or figured out a new way to interpret the constitution. Your ideas are either obvious or useless. There’s no third category.
I understand that people want to help. The best way to do so is listen to the experts and not second-guess them.
These chicken pox parties were done by new-ager anti-vaxxers who falsely, ignorantly believed that catching a case of chicken pox from a mild case meant that their kid’s case would be mild, too. Not so. Just as in COVID-19,its a crapshoot.
This is all based on the myth that Covid-19 is only dangerous for old people. From February 12 to March 16 20% of hospitalizations were for people 20-44 years old, and another 18% were in those 45-54 years old. Sure, that is a minority of cases, but those are still huge percentages. 80% of deaths were in people 65 or older, but that is still 20% of the deaths in people under 65.
12% of the people admitted to ICU were 20-44. That was at a time when the hospitals could handle all of the cases they had. When the curve ticks up a bit, there won’t be ICU beds, and many of those people who might have been saved with treatment will die; old and young alike.
In order for those percentages to be meaningful, you’d need to consider the percentages of the groups that were exposed at the time. If I expose 100 people to this disease, 2 over 65 and 98 under 30 and 1 from each of those age groups ends up in the hospital it is easy to say 50% of the hospitalizations were for people under 30.
None of this is based on the myth it is only dangerous to old people. It is dangerous to anyone of any age, just as vaccines are. But we are playing percentage games now. There are no certainties.
Exapno Mapcase is right. The experts have weighed in and said we need social distancing. I’m not second guessing that. There are a myriad of reasons why other proposals won’t work, including trying to gain herd immunity through controlled exposure. I’m doing my part, to be sure. But if the call goes out for people with little risk to step up and take a risk so others with a much higher risk can be spared exposure, I’ll be first in line. I’m mid 50s but in perfect health. I’d rather not the likes of Green Bean or ThelmaLou risk exposure.
Please tell me this doesn’t mean you’re an anti-vaxxer. Sorry for the <snip>, but there wasn’t anything in the context to help infer your meaning. I’ hoping you meant that the tiny danger of vaccination is consistent across age cohorts, but that’s certainly not what this says.
Chickenpox vaccine was licensed for use in the United States in 1995. Before then, the chickenpox parties were hosted by ordinary moms and dads who got their children all the shots that were recommended at the time. Yes, new-ager anti-vaxxers continue to host them today, but they are just continuing the tradition that regular people started.
I not sure if a live virus unattenuated vaccine is something it would be 100.00 percent bonkers to do research on. The doozy of a problem I see is that people taking it could violate quarantine and give it to others.
Like any vaccine, dosage is a BIG question. Too much, and you wind up in the ICU. Too little, and no immunity.
It might take just as long to develop and test a safe and effective live virus unattenuated vaccine – your sniff-it tube – as it would to develop one that didn’t have the tremendous disadvantage that other people can catch the disease from you.
I have only ever encountered the new-age anti-vaxxers doing it. In either case, parents were badly misinformed as to the notion that one mild-case exposure led to new mild cases. It could be a very serious condition. From your link:
It was, before your time, done by parents who wanted to time the disease their kid would surely be getting in any case to a less inconvenient time. In the context of the time it made sense actually.
Of the 100 to 150 deaths attributed to chickenpox the vast majority occurred in the very few who got chikenpox in teen aged years or later and extremely few in the vast majority who got it in earlier childhood. While that was not the timing most parents were think of, timing it to happen before then was also a very good choice.
Allow me to share my experience. My mother did not host chicken pox parties, but as soon as a kid in our neighborhood got chicken pox, I was taken over to play. They didn’t feel great and didn’t want to play. I often didn’t want to play with them. Too bad. My mother’s thinking was it was better for me to get chicken pox as a kid than later on. It was NOT a matter of convenience. She worked, so there WAS no “convenient time.”
Alas, I didn’t get chicken pox then. Mom said I must be immune. I wish. She was right about it being better to get it as a kid, though. I got it in my late twenties and was very, very ill.