Response from Connor Flexman to a social media post I wrote containing some of the claims above:
I think the arguments for [throwing a party now rather than later, if you’re going to throw one anytime in the next seven months] are basically correct—it’s not very bad to do it now, and it’s not clear it will get better bc of increased infectiousness of Delta.
I think the best counterargument is to say [...] that it’s likely we have some dip for some reason by Mar 2022, especially toward the end of that. Cases are currently just above average (keeping in mind that early in the pandemic we were failing to catch most cases and tests were likely worse). But we’ve never seen a 7-month period where cases didn’t drop super low. Last winter, Feb/Mar had gotten way safer. Further, if we’re at 1% cases now and they’re cycling 1/wk (bc Delta is faster), that means over the next 30 weeks 30% of the population will get it—which means either we get pushed *substantially* toward herd immunity, or else it has to drop under current levels at some point.
The obvious counterargument is that herd immunity is no longer meaningful, since Delta seems to breakthrough against vaccines like 20-40% of the time and natural immunity isn’t that much better, and the control system means that as we get closer to “herd immunity” then people will start making out more and more until we still miraculously have the same number of infections.)
Overall, I’d probably still do it now, but I could certainly imagine many people with lower risk tolerances wanting you to wait until the statistically-reasonably-likely time that risk has gone down 4x.
Response from Connor Flexman to a social media post I wrote containing some of the claims above: