Almost everything in today's hospitals is a computer. Our ultrasound machines run on anything from DOS to Windows 7, so do MRI's, CT's, many x-ray machines and other diagnostic devices. Even those that run other embedded systems are commonly operated from a Windows computer. And ever more of those devices are plugged into the hospital network. Images, lab results etc. feed into digital databases, often without any paper backup. Our cath lab is inoperable without computers, so are several vital pieces of gear in our OR's.

The news reports released so far are light on details, but if the patient had suffered from anything that needed imaging or a lab to diagnose and subsequently treat, then yes, it may well have taken a computer to treat her. This could have been a condition as ordinary as a heart attack or stroke.

Many hospitals – and far too many companies in general – still treat IT as "the people who fix printers" instead of the mission-critical backbone of their whole enterprise. Sometimes this comes at the cost of human life.

It is special insofar as we are talking about a car here, not a 'pure' software product. Cars are sold, software is licensed under a contract. Now those two legally distinct concepts are merging in interesting ways. For modifying cars we have an established legal framework in most industrial countries: Usually the after-market parts have to be certified to conform to certain standards, and there are general regulations as to what constitutes a roadworthy vehicle. Within these limitations the manufacturer up to now has had basically no say in what could be done to sold cars. The new 'everything is software' approach taken not only by Tesla but also BMW, Audi and others will test the limits of this legal framework. On the one hand there certainly are safety considerations when poking around in the car's software. On the other hand just implementing something in code instead of a discrete little box with wires going in and out does not magically take away all consumer rights.

This question will certainly make a lot of lawyers rich over the next decade.

I share this concern, although a vaccine which provides temporary immunity would still be beneficial. We do not need to make everyone immune forever, we 'just' need to break enough chains of infections to starve the individual local outbreaks of susceptible victims for however long the infected are shedding the active virus. Many existing vaccines need to be reapplied every so-and-so-many years to provide adequate protection; even if we had to re-vaccinate whole states every six months for, say, two years to stop the pandemic, it would be doable. Not easy, not cheap, not pleasant, but doable.

Firstly, remember that the number of recovered only matters if they gain immunity for longer than each wave of infections takes to pass through the population. At this point there are conflicting findings to that regard.

Secondly, remember that 'recovered' does not always mean 'back to full health'. There are significant numbers of COVID-infected with residual lung scarring and other organ damages even in mild or asymptomatic cases. Coming back to my first point, people with preexisting conditions are much more vulnerable to COVID-19, and we now have a whole lot more of them. Without immunity – naturally acquired or through a reliable vaccine – we have many more people to worry about in a second wave. And these people are at a higher risk of dying in the future from other threats completely unrelated to SARS-CoV-2 – eg. from a seasonal flu or another pandemic just like the one mentioned in TFA.

Thirdly, viruses mutate. All bets are off should SARS-CoV-2 mutate enough to be unrecognisable to the immune system. We do not currently know the full potential of this virus. And I hope we never will.

Fourthly, do not trust the numbers in either direction. COVID-19 related deaths have been both over- and undercounted so severely in different locations and at different times that the directly counted death rates are a guesstimate at best. Excess mortality rates are probably our most reliable indicators, and they take time to calculate and publish. Remember: Whether you die directly from SARS-CoV-2 or from an exacerbation of another condition due to a lack of adequate medical treatment because healthcare providers are overburdened with COVID-19 cases matters mostly to statisticians and historians – either way you die in a pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2.

1. Not every known problem has a ready and available solution. There is a reason why many people have a diagnosis with the word 'idiopathic' in it, and we still have not found the magic button to turn off tumors, vascular diseases and many other very painful conditions. For many diseases there simply is no treatment for the foreseeable future.
2. Many treatments we do have take time to work. Should people suffer through weeks, months or even years of pain just to be reminded that they are still not fully recovered?

If we only used medication that we know the exact mechanism of, pharmacies could make do with a single shelf. We know next to nothing about basic functions of our body. This is why we have those expensive drug trials: to figure out if a drug a) has the desired effect and b) does not have side effects worse than the condition it is trying to treat. The drugs we have on the market are mostly safe, in the sense that they are dangerous substances used to treat even more dangerous illnesses.

We have already been fucking with this region of the brain for centuries. The method proposed in the study is a sniper shot. What we have been doing so far with current pain medication is more akin to planet-wide carpet bombing. Pain meds have terrible side effects; if we could reduce their use by targetting just one tiny centre in the brain instead of blindy flooding the body with substances that mess with a whole range of processes across different organs, that would be a big win.

You drastically overestimate most people's driving skills, I am afraid, especially when talking about the parentally-set limiter. I have more than a decade of experience driving with lights and siren, and I can count on one hand the instances where accelerating got me out of a dangerous situation. The one instrument that most drivers, especially the young and inexperienced, can use reliably and quickly enough to avoid fatal collisions is the brake. To the contrary, having this option of accelerating out of close calls taken away may well teach people to drive safer, to keep more distance, be more aware of their surroundings and to avoid those situations which lead to close encounters in the first place, like blindly cutting through narrow gaps in traffic or changing onto faster lanes without headroom to accelerate beforehand. Or it may teach them to drive below the set limit, to keep that reserve speed for emergencies. I really hope more manufacturers follow suit.

You are missing three crucial factors:

1. It is currently unknown for how long immunity is developed after an infection, and how well the protection actually works. I have seen tentative warnings that high viral loads could trigger re-infections. There are currently too many unknowns in this question of herd immunity to bet lives upon it.
2. There already have been several viral strains identified. Although Coronavirus' mutation rate is relatively low, every single replication is a roll of the dice. All it takes one such roll to go the wrong way and we are left with two waves running through the population. Same thing if the next seasonal flu should turn out to be one of the nastier variants. Your safety margin would be used up in days in such a case.
3. The death rate is not the only concern, and to me quite frankly not even the most relevant. We have seen severe organ damage even after mild or asymptomatic progressions, and for all we know most of it is irreversible. Looking at the social and economic consequences of the relatively widespread loss of pulmonary function alone leaves me quite worried: We are bound to see a sizable number of firefighters, pilots, industrial and rescue divers and other professionals who have to undergo occupational health certifications fail these and drop out of the industries or even out of the workforce entirely. The operation of many industries, however, vitally relies on those people being available. You cannot run an airport with too few firefighters. You cannot keep oil platforms running without divers. All these professions affected are a) highly specialised and training-intense and b) with few exceptions already suffering from shortages of skilled workers. Nevermind that the military would be hampered severly if even a modest percentage of, say, jet pilots and combat divers fail their certs. The mortality fetish blinds people to the many ways this virus leaves its mark.

What I find most concerning, though, is that all I hear is people wanting to go back to how things were before. When your software is hit with an exploit it is not enough to catch that one criminal who used it and lock him up. You need to patch that hole in your code so others cannot exploit it again. We are not patching the severe holes in our social and economic fabric that left us so vulnerable to this virus in the first place. So when the next pandemic comes, we will be in the very same position as today.

With Windows 7 (since SP1) I would more or less agree with you, but Windows 10 has been a stroll down memory lane back to where Linux was around 2000 to 2005. Disappearing desktop, suddenly unreadable partitions, hanging system services, crashing applications...and every other patch gets pulled because it causes issues.

Right now I am typing this on my desktop. Under Linux. Running from the SSD I pulled from my laptop. I have so far spent two weeks on first debugging a suddenly crashing Windows 10, then trying to reinstall, only to have some update leave my desktop inaccessible. Again.

There are horror stories on all sides.

[...] no-one would be stupid enough to allow a large drain on the power.

I really like your optimism, but disposable cups intended for the distribution of hot liquids come with a warning on them that advises recipients that their contents may be hot since some recipients managed to burn themselves because they did not make this deduction themselves. So yes, if such a scheme becomes widely available, there will be the most delicious stories about greedy morons stranding themselves with empty batteries.

If Merkel had said back then that 70% of Germans will be infected

You misunderstood me. Had sufficient action been taken in the early weeks, including limiting travel and public events, enticing companies to move as much of their workforce to telework/teleconferences, reserving disinfectant and protective gear for health institutions instead of letting them be sold to panicking morons on the consumer market, aggressive screening of patients, pre-emptive reservation of intensive care capacities etc., we might not have a 70% infection rate on top of a wholly unprepared overburdened public health system in the first place.

Merkel said now what experts had been warning about since December. That we are facing this 'hard truth' is in no small part the result of her absolute lack of action and leadership. The Federal and State governments have universally screwed up the public response to the outbreak. Schools, kindergartens and universities should have been closed weeks ago, only in the last few days have large public events been cancelled (and even this not uniformly but with absolutely ridiculous exceptions). Testing of patients, of the deceased and, most critically, of health professionals has been avoided as much as possible to keep the numbers low on paper, putting those with pre-existing conditions at an enormous risk of exposure. Quarantine rules have been suspended for medical personnel, despite dire warnings about the likely consequences. Public authorities are not equipped or even legally authorised to competently handle the situation, coordination is virtually non-existent. Medical resources have been insufficient to deal with the day-to-day business before COVID-19, and they are maxed out already way beyond capacity despite the peak still being weeks ahead of us. This is common knowledge to anyone in the health community, and it has been openly decried by experts for months. Merkel has not given us a hard truth, she just admitted to herself what anyone informed already knew.

And why now, so late in the game? To keep the stock markets happy for as long as possible. "Aussitzen", waiting things out until the one sane but politically unpalatable solution has become "alternativlos", without alternatives, is her signature style. And it will cost us dearly in this situation.

Your comment is disingenious, to say the least. Firstly because being raised nominally Christian was the default for the societies almost all people you named lived in, unless one was Jewish or a member of another minority religion. They were raised to be Christian in societies where other options were non-existant, not to be spoken of or at the very least harmful to their careers and social standing. Calling them Christian is about as relevant as calling them white or male when looking at successful Western scientists of their respective eras.

Secondly, even as believers most of them clashed heavily with official religious doctrine, in both their personal lives and in their work. Presenting them as examples of smart Christians is dishonest when many of them were considered 'bad' Christians or outright apostates by their respective churches. It is like saying Rock is terrible because Nickelback sucks.

And thirdly, all the people you named posessed qualities that enabled them to excel in their respective fields, unhindered by their faith (if they actually were believers). Mike Pence on the other hand has no quality to qualify him for the position, and he has demonstrated repeatedly that his faith makes it impossible for him to make rational decisions based on the facts available. His faith actively disqualifies him. So even if 99% of believers were Nobel Price-level geniuses, GP's point still stands: Trump handed the job of dealing with a hard scientific problem to a guy who has been lining up for decades to get the Four Horsemen's autographs.

Of course! Because when there are hundreds of unexplained medical conditions to choose from, researchers will be rushing in droves to pick the one that has already proven itself to be a toxic minefield where activists decide which research is allowed and which one is bullied into silence. I can absolutely see that happen.