Professor Kim Woo-joo from Korea University Guro Hospital predicts that the BEST possible case at this point is for the global coronavirus pandemic to be stopped in July or August. This is based on following the SARS situation which started November 2002 and ended in July 2003.
Professor Kim now gives less than a 10% chance for this best-case scenario.
I believe the predictions of South Korean and Taiwanese experts because they have been focused on SARS-like coronaviruses for 17 years. They devoted effort, budget and created command centers, global monitoring and integrated databases and mobile phone systems that can monitor all testing, medical supplies, quarantines and contact tracing.
SOURCES – Youtube Interview of Prof Kim
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
You can get some of the benefit of herd immunity by practicing social distancing. The people who have a higher probability of getting infected will get infected and short circuit the transmission of the virus. The people who advocated to have the virus wash over us didn’t comprehend that the virus doesn’t know when to stop so it will infect as many people as it can which may have been a lot higher than 20% of the population.
You can go out in public. I see people walking and jogging from my window daily. If you are going to a crowded place just wear your mask.
Based on the number dead and the number of those tested positive 3%-5% was possible. I would still like to see a large random sample be given the anti-body test so we can estimate the number of people infected. This would help us get a better handle on the real death rate. By the way, COVID is rampaging thru the nursing home killing at a rate much higher than 5%.
I plan to donate plasma after I get sick. You can’t make that required. I would say don’t even apply social pressure. Many people have a dangerous history. We do not want to see a surge in HIV or Mad Cow. Just tell people donating plasma is a thing that would help.
People who have difficulty with regular blood donations should not give plasma. It takes a long time even if all goes well. Collapsing veins just traumatizes everyone involved.
Nice one wumao
What is the IMC?
Thanks, that is the best comment on the history of the virus I have seen so far.
We have to move beyond social distancing once the active case load drops low. Universal masks, stay at home with pay if even slightly sick (until tested), keep social venues closed – we could tolerate those until we get a vaccine, as long as everyone (even recovered) is required to do them.
I’m not sure what we’d do about schools, since they also serve as babysitters for parents who’d be back at work. Maybe pay a parent who stays home to take care of their own kids, if their kids are doing well with distance learning?
Well… that’s true. But I’d be doing some sort of dangerous sport. This just happens to be one that doubles as transport.
There are more things different than SARS.
This is more contagious.
Fewer young healthy people die, which doesn’t provide enough incentive for young and middle aged healthy adults to take serious precautions in advance.
Only when they see old people start to die in droves, hospitals get overwhelmed, their stocks crash, legal restrictions and threats start to be implemented, people get layed off etc. will they start taking it seriously.
Mild illness is also a problem, not just asymptomatic people. If you have a fever of 38 degrees you may barely notice or care. If you have a mild cough, well spring is here and pollen are everywhere, of course you have a cough; must be the damned birches.
I think that’s a bit too optimistic. I think this lesson will need repeating one more repetition before people observe social norms like wearing a mask, staying at home with mild symptoms etc and before enough of the super-spreader assholes have become immune. By autumn people will probably have relaxed enough that it will start spreading again; probably won’t be as high of a peak as the first.
3%-5% deaths was never even on the table; that’s why social distancing and contact tracing like Taiwan was difficult to implement elsewhere. What we are talking about is mostly the old and the sick dying, hence selfish people will not care to observe any restrictions in their mobility or behaviour.
Transmissible diseases tend to follow 80/20 distributions. 20% of infected do 80% of the transmitting. *Probably* greatly overlapping with the same 20% that are most likely to be infected. Once the assholes have become immune I think R(t) will plummet.
If this was SARS, it would not be difficult to convince Teenagers to cancel spring break, skiing holidays, unnescessary gatherings, observe social distance etc.
Toghether with the WHO acting as China’s puppet and recommending against all necessary precautions; ignoring and not recognizing Taiwan and their effective response (still today); this meant that an outbreak became inevitable.
I therefor think the following would be more accurate:
It is politically impossible to let millions of people die, therefor it cannot happen.
It is politically impossible to lock things down until a lot of people die; therefor this will happen.
R(t) drops below 1 with moderate social distancing, which happens when enough people are scared and enough assholes no longer infectious. Ultimately maybe 2-20% infected. Ultimately around 1% of those infected dead (we don’t actually know, large error bars on number asymptomatic cases).
Locking things down gradually at the right time theoretically levels the transmission off and avoids overshoot.
Infectious disease transmission roughly follows the 80-20 rule. 80% of transmission is caused by 20%. I strongly suspect these 20% are also the most likely to be infected, least likely to stay at home if they are not bed-ridden, because the same risky behaviour that infects others efficiently increases their risk of being infected.
The R0 is only reported at about 2-5 in most places without any particular precautions. It doesn’t require extreme vigilance in theory to kill it without anyone being infected. It just requires very high compliance with simple preventative measures. The failure of “super-spreaders” to follow these preventative measures is why entire societies have lock downs.
Lots of testing and contact tracing cuts transmission chains.
Staying at home at the first sign of mild illness.
Simple masks and staying further away from people at shops and workplaces cuts transmission from asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic individuals.
Early detection, (fever screening etc) and you’re getting people to isolate early.
Simple drive through testing and you’re getting people to take isolation seriously instead of “it’s just allergies”.
Avoiding extra risky situations and behaviours (.e.g buffets, public transport, leisurely shopping, big events)
These all apply multiplicatively. 20% here, 50% there and soon R0 is <1.
What you call “cold phase” is exactly what herd immunity means.
The negation of herd immunity is that the “hot phase” never exists. People either remain chronically infected or get re-infected continously.
The fact that epidemics burn themselves out is herd immunity.
Herd immunity does not mean the virus magically stops mutating a new antigen that can infect you again later. It doesn’t mean that the virus disappears.
We have only ever eradicated one disease; small pox. Vaccination doesn’t mean measles disappears, because there’s shit-hole countries that don’t, and there’s asshole parents that don’t vaccinate their children, so herd immunity is eventually lost and it enters a “hot phase” of measles.
Here are some things we know:
The virus is most closely related to the RATG13 coronavirus from bats. It contains a spike protein (S-protein) that is most similar to a pangolin virus. SARS-like coronaviruses are undersampled so closer relatives may exist that we don’t know about.
There is a BSL-4 lab in Wuhan specifically built to study Ebola and SARS-like coronaviruses.
SARS-CoV escaped from the BSL-3 lab in Beijing twice due to poor biosafety.
The research published from the Wuhan BSL-4 lab shows that SARS-like coronaviruses were being studied.
Another lower security facility exists in Wuhan 300 m from the market place that held potentially infected animals (bats, civets etc) intended for later study.
At least one researcher was convicted for selling lab animals that were supposed to be destroyed as food to the wet market.
The CCP had the evidence destroyed at the Wuhan market place. No source of the virus can be identified even if one existed at the market.
Given the sequences of the virus and the rate the virus is currently mutating it was spreading some time in october-november in China.
Civets and pangolins are valued for “traditional chinese medicine” and existed at the market. Bats are not really a thing in Wuhan.
—-
I would suggest that the notion that it may have escaped from a lab has as strong/weak evidence as the notion that it arrived at the market place.
If CCP knows for sure, they won’t tell.
And yet, every single, damned time evidence-based believes and theories being discussed was rejected as conspiracies by fake news and the WHO itself, before begrudgingly admitting them as if they had been obviously correct all along without even as much as an apology. E.g. from January:
Human to human transmission was dismissed as “unfounded” almost right up until China instituted the largest cordon sanitaire in human history and started welding people inside their homes.
Long incubation phase; up to 2 weeks. Which was to be expected as it was the case with the similar SARS virus.
Some suggestive evidence that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission is possible and safety precautions should reflect this.
Virus shedding continues after a person is apparently recoved for quite some weeks; virus particles may or may not still be viable. This isn’t uncommon in other diseases (e.g. Ebola is shed in sperm up to a year after recovering) so it’s not that surprising.
Children can be infected.
Infected children are likely infectious even if they don’t have serious symptoms.
Masks are very effective at preventing people from spreading the disease if they have mild or no symptoms.
Infectious droplets may be airborne for much longer than a few minutes. Infectious droplets may be generated by just breathing. This is known for influenza and it would be positively *odd* if things were different here.
based on following the SARS situation? the major solely difference of AF20 virus is that patients of no symptom can infect others. It just likes the power of stealth aircraft fighter.
I’ve got no trouble listening to a SARS expert but I hope it’s not because he’s predicting this via SARS models! With SARS you were likely sick and already in hospital well *before* you became infectious. So even though it was vastly more deadly on a per infection basis, Sars Cov 2 has already kicked this out of the ball park just by the sheer number of infections.
thumbs up, but only in ironic sense, since bombing COVID19 would also imply bombing those who themselves have a history of dropping bombs to achieve freedom & liberty. That’s the interesting thing about viruses; they don’t usually respect political borders and ideologies. But at least a ‘good’ bombing somewhere would support the world’s IMC. Lord knows they really need our support right now (sarc).
According to the articles on this, it has been standard practice to disinfect rooms with *broad band* UV for some time. But that is done with no one in the room because the broad band UV is bad for humans (skin cancer, cataracts in the eyes). The advantage of this particular narrow band of UV is that it only penetrates a few microns in water or biological material, which is enough to kill bacteria & viruses, but not to harm any multicellular being.
Herd Immunity occurs only through vaccination. Historically it never happened before the vaccines: populations maintained endemic pockets of infection and they were subject to cyclic spreading of epidemics when a large part of the population was exposed in a relatively short period of time ( let’s call it hot phase) and a second phase when there was a subsequent slow increase of the fraction that was not exposed to the pathogen due both to the death of exposed individuals either by the pathogen or by other natural cases and by the birth of new individuals never exposed to the pathogen (let’s call it cooldown). When the subpopulation of the not immune individuals became high enough the epidemic occurred again. As people tend not to travel a lot and most of the travels took a long time most of the hot phases and cooldowns where not in sync in adjacent regions, however when bigger portions of the population moved (because of strengthening of trade routes, pilgrimages and wars) this allowed adjacent subpopulations to synchronize causing then continent-wide epidemics. This is also one of the reasons why the Justinian plague recurred for two centuries: there is no herd immunity without vaccination it is just a peak followed by a lower and constant presence of the pathogen.
Regards
People with immunity can still be carriers. You can’t have your “superpower” workers mixing with the regular mortals, they’ll still spread the virus.
All this “immunity passes” talk is just that. Talk. Our gov (UK) really doesn’t have an exit strategy, but they want to appear as they’re considering things.
Without really careful management of when and how these restrictions are limited there’ll be another surge and we’ll be back where we are now. Just letting people with immunity back to work isn’t the answer. Whether anyone wants it to be or not.
The thought that this would be stopped before it got to the US was quite reasonable given how effective we were at stopping SARS and MERS from getting over here. There was no indication at that time that COVID19 would be any different. Every measure that had been taken to stop SARS and MERS was in place. Even when the alarm was first sounded and social distancing and quarantining was finally starting to be mandated (and even now) many people did not and continue to not take it seriously. Had we risen to the level of action we are at now back in January, people would have been even less compliant with distancing and quarantining than they are now. Lets pretend that quarantines were put in place in January and people were compliant and we stopped COVID from breaking out significantly in the US. Then you’d have people complaining that the economy was put in the toilet for no reason and that things would have been just fine had we stayed open for business and just done the same things that we did for SARS and MERS. It is a no-win situation for politicians who are at the mercy of the whims of the uneducated masses and other, hostile politicians, looking for any opportunity to discredit their opponents. You have to choose the lowest risk strategy given the information you have at the time and I feel like, when you consider what information we had and when, logical and pragmatic measures were taken appropriate to the risk assessed by the information we had at the time.
your bike 18 months ago. almost lost you.
We will see if Tennessee ends up better or worse than Kentucky.
I don’t think you understand herd immunity. It does not mean 100% of the population getting infected. Herd immunity effects can curb the virus acceleration even to the point of deceleration and case shrinking with even single-digit percentages of population infection. Single-digit percentages of infections certainly do *not* produce 3-5% population deaths.
contract tracing is phenomenally difficult once you have hundreds of people that are infected, let alone thousands or tens-of-thousands. social distancing can help some things, but it won’t prevent the virus curves from naturally reaching herd-immunity effects long before a vaccine becomes available.
Or some people need to earn living
What about ozone generators? Can they also be used to disinfect buildings and offices?
If you are one foot in the grave every major shock will put in the other…
Meaning what? What is the psychological effect they are trying to produce?
Same difference, as one of my physics professors would say, much to our ánnoyance.
Germicidal UV lamps operate in the low 200 nm range. Unfortunately, wavelengths that low don’t propagate well through the atmosphere. Water vapor in the atmosphere might as well act like a beam block in a tabletop laser/optical train set up.
Fake news? Pull no punches. We can start by finger pointing news services attempting to convince the public it’s all a hoax and life can go on as normał. Completely irresponsible.
It might be impossible to truly figure out the exact origin, but we do know it came from and spread throughout the world via Wuhan, China.
I live in Kentucky and Beshear is doing a fantastic job, didn’t vote for him before but will next time! I live in Bowling Green and just about all restaurants have plexiglass up around the cashiers and drive throughs, stores only allow a certain amount in at a time and don’t allow hoarding. So far so good, but we are prepared now for the long haul.
This is what is going on right now, the problem is that it doesn’t accommodate many people affected. For the propagation there are many systems in place in more populated areas to accommodate all points but in rural areas they don’t have strong measures to achieve these goals. The virus has not hit rural America yet but when it does it’ll be bad, cities at least have way more capacity to deal with these pandemics but more rural areas will be overrun. Fake news I agree with quashing. As for immunity, not so sure, I don’t know if I’m wrong but I think there are reports of people being infected again. Although that isn’t how viruses work. I mean I had COVID-19 back in mid-February, got tested positive, quarantine and beat it. Hopefully I’m immune but still cautious and ready to re-quarantine. And yes, there needs to be probes into why the Govt took so long to get ready. Need to hold China accountable and get their real cases and death numbers. Then vote out those idiot governors that avoided measures because that is just criminal negligence when a pandemic is ravaging the world.
According to FT:
According to the WHO’s alert response on Jan 5:
What does the WHO have to do with your beliefs regarding the Republic of China(Taiwan) being an entity distinct from the People’s Republic of China(China)?
I could find no reports COVID-19 was quietly spreading unchecked around China and the world Sep thru November 2019. Could you provide a source?
the easy answer to all this of course is you get a ‘vulnerable’ sticker on your ID when you’re either 65 or have a certain illness/ pathology – meaning that you have to isolate and get first checks during any pre-pandemic. Since we seem to get a trans-national or international SARS or MERS or COVID or whatever every 6 – 12 years with annual flus, this seems reasonable.
Some interesting Italian stats here:
https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_20_marzo_eng.pdf
Things I noted:
1) Average age of someone dying of COVID19 is 78 (note that life expectancy in Italy is 82)
2) 88% of those who died had some other co-morbidity
A case for people dying with COVID19 rather than by COVID19?
We don’t actually want “social” distancing. We want “physical” distancing.
I don’t get why this term is used.
Likewise, in my area, the usual level of delivery for the major supermarket chains is apparently 2% of total sales.
Currently, it is at least 10 times that, with many more people wanting the service but not able to get it.
They have scaled up by a factor of 10 in a little over a month. I’m actually rather impressed.
And yes, along with all the people losing hours and jobs, there is a huge hiring boom in packers, pickers and delivery people for the supermarkets.
But there is just a whole lot of stuff that takes time. Those insulated packages the cold goods are packed into for example. The stores didn’t have 10 to 50 times as many packs as they needed just sitting around “in case”. They need to be purchased… at the same time as everyone else ON THE PLANET wants to buy 50 times as many as normal.
Good luck with that.
On the bright side, with everyone actually being at home, taking delivery is much less hassle than before.
Hence, the safest place to be really is having a picnic in the park out in the sunshine.
Ask any bike rider and they’ll tell you that most people DO drive a wastefully expensive, heavy, fuel burning tank to work. And often claim to do so for reasons of safety.
Well, not this month… the roads are just fantastic to ride on at the moment.
But Mindbreaker’s suggestions don’t apply to society as a whole, where you have complex decision making processes and multiple “stakeholders” with individual conflicts of interest or who exist purely to disrupt the process as proof of their own self importance.
They apply to individual businesses. Where the decision is made by the owner or small group of leaders who are able, and indeed used to, make decisions rapidly and decisively.
If Dana the restaurant-bar owner decides to get her currently idle staff to rearrange the seating and put up barriers so that when she re-opens in May the customers see they will be sitting in isolated, hygienic, groups of 1 to 3. Then that’s between her and her customers.
The fact that Bob who runs the restaurant across the road refuses to do so because it “sends a message of social isolation” isn’t Dana’s concern, and the customers will decide which option they prefer.
We still don’t have a general consensus on which moves were stupid and which were not.
So unless/until that happens, nobody will be blamed for doing what many people still consider to be appropriate.
OK, the “hug a Chinese” campaign of Italy, any survivors from that will be driven from office.
But USA, UK? Large groups still support any of the existing policies that were proposed/enacted.
If everyone would just buy into social distancing then this pandemic would be over in two weeks. But a lot of people don’t have either the discipline or the desire to do what is right for two weeks so the pandemic goes on.
Taiwan approach below. The US is a richer country but has more of a disoriented clown car approach. Queue circus clown music. The US needs to treat disease invasion like military invasion in order to save numerous lives. Too late this time around. Get act together for the 2050 super flu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAaDC0lv13s
Yes, once it is contained and the cases drop off, we can go to more or less normal. Just continue with masks, moderate social distancing, no big group events and then deal with any hotspots with aggressive testing and contact tracing.
Infrastructure includes devices to instruct order pickers (Zebra or Android/iOS device), perhaps beefed up wireless AP infrastructure in store to handle the additional traffic, connection to the internet needs to be able to handle the additional devices, server infrastructure to handle the additional clients. That’s just the IT piece. When preparing orders for pickup you need to have space to stage the orders, including temperature control (for chilled/frozen items) after they have been picked and until they are collected by customers/delivery drivers. You’ll also need to reconfigure the customer service experience as usually pick up involves dialing in to inform to store you have arrived. So you’d need to scale that up as well. Also likely need people in the parking lot to direct traffic with radios to be able to coordinate. You could make do with existing carts used by customers, but most retailers use dedicated carts for picking and bringing the order out to the customer.
I definitely agree that this is likely going to be a step-change in the pickup/delivery market in North America. I don’t think we’ll go all the way to delivery only as 2/3 of the market is very price sensitive and pickup/delivery is still structurally much higher cost than DIY shopping. So once this storm passes (and it will pass), I would say at least 80-90% of grocery shopping will go back to in-store.
Thanks. I am curious what infrastructure would be needed – seems like the majority of needs could be met with existing equipment plus driver-supplied vehicles? Hand-held inventory control devices could be temporarily substituted for by taking orders through check-out stations.
Regardless, I’m thinking that this may be a tipping point for grocery delivery over in-person shopping. Some people will always want to shop for their fresh meat and produce in person, but almost no one will care if they don’t get to buy their canned and boxed goods in person.
In a year or two we might have only order fulfillment centers and boutique grocers focused on fresh foods and new or unusual items.
Herd immunity would required the sacrifices of 3%-5% of the population. I would prefer social distancing to get the numbers down then a strong program of testing, contact tracing and isolation to eliminate the virus.
I agree with most of what you said. Just wanted to add blood plasma from recovered COVID patients to the treatment option.
It shouldn’t be a mystery to any adult, evidence vs unsupported beliefs.
There is a first time for everything.
That would just be more job killing regulations, other people’s lives isn’t worth the inconvenience.
Who decides what news is fake? You? CNN?
The biggest so-called conspiracy I read of was the one that the virus originated in a Chinese lab, and it escaped as a consequence of bad handling. Just another Chinese industrial accident. Should we be suppressing this notion as fake or investigating it to prove or disprove it?
Confirmed by testing or did you get a sniffle you assumed was COVID-19?
ah-hah – the new (outcome) inequality:
“… “recovered individuals would have a kind of superpower and be highly desirable workers.” Antibody tests will soon be able to identify these workers and that will help to reopen the economy because not only can these workers go back to work relatively safely they can also work relatively safely with those who are not immune, thus a kind of multiplier-effect for the workplace. Hence, Italy and the UK are talking about “Immunity Passes” that would allow (we hope) immune workers to go back to work.
One factor, however, which hasn’t been taken into account is that the demand to go back to work may be so strong that some people will want to become deliberately infected. If not done carefully, however, these people will be a threat to others, especially in their asymptomatic phase. Thus, if we use Immunity Passes they will need to be combined with variolation, infecting people with small doses of the virus to create immunity under controlled conditions…”
Life may get back to kinda normal by june. No big gatherings still. Everyone wears masks etc.
I am connected to a grocer that does delivery and pickup. Online penetration before current situation was 3%. Currently running closer to 10%. Getting to 100% would take considerable time and investment in infrastructure and staffing.
Liquor delivery was stopped here so that the postal workers would not have to check ID.
We don’t have data to support that. Just wishes and guesses. It may be that that is correct, we don’t have the data. The price of being wrong could be another order of magnitude more bodies.
“smallpox or tubercolosis.”
Look at what you wrote…..and think upon it….THINK,
Meanwhile im gonna go ask the Mayan…oh wait..the Aztecs…oh wait…
btw 1.2 million people still die of TB every year.
The only way to get herd immunity as fast as possible is to infect people as fast as possible. There are only two ways to get herd immunity: enough people are immune due to previously contracting the virus and recovering, or are immune due to vaccination. There is no vaccine in the near future, so fast as possible herd immunity means 50-70% of the population getting infected as fast as possible. That is just logic, and it is your fault if you did not play out the implications of what you wrote before posting it.
Me wanting there to be an easy way out won’t make it so. So if you want this to spread as rapidly as possible through the population, I suggest you start by contracting COVID-19 yourself, then going around and coughing on as many people as you can find in public. I guess they’ll all be fine because there are effective drug treatments. Hope we have enough of those drugs, and that those drugs are as effective as basic quarantine measures, or enough hospital beds to handle those the drugs don’t work on!
We really need this
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/can-uv-light-fight-spread-influenza
According to this, the lead researcher thinks it would have been ready to deploy if COVID19 had been delayed by a year.
https://www.kron4.com/health/coronavirus/researchers-racing-to-prevent-the-next-pandemic-with-ultraviolet-light/
That was what should have been done in January when we knew it was spread between people droplet+fomite like influensa, only more contagious and nobody was immune; maybe was aerosol/airborn spread (jury still out; looks like mostly droplets), probably spreads asymptomatically (this looks all but confirmed now), long incubation period (now 95% present symptoms before day 14, with some outliers).
I remember when these things were first being discussed, there were all conspiracy theories. Downplayed for a week or more before it was admitted it was true.
2 months was pissed away prentending it was “just a flu” and “wouldn’t spread outside of China” by fake news and their cheer-leaders.
Wereas Taiwan did what you suggested. They knew and tried to warn the WHO in late december! WHO still barely recognize the existance of Taiwan as an entity distinct from China and bought China’s lies, bait, hook and sinker; still claiming in january that there was no evidence of human to human spread shortly before China instituted the largest cordon sanitare in human history. That’s another month pissed away by the WHO.
There’s some evidence China knew a lot earlier than they let on and ordered old samples destroyed in december. That’s another month, or two, or maybe even three wasted.
You are likely too optimistic if you think this lockdown will be used to make the preparations necessary to restart a functional economy after the lockdown ends. It will be too little, too slow.
If herd immunity wasn’t a thing for smallpox the outbreak would never end; it wouldn’t be an outbreak that came every couple of decades when not enough people are immune any more, it would just be a permanent state of horror.
Man, oh man… the conversation has gone sideways fast! Its really simple, people:
• Treatment improvements
• Propagation mitigation
• Community immunity boosting
• Dispelling false narratives
• Restoring the Economy rapidly
№ 1 — TREATMENT … chloroquinine, anti-virals, rapid evaluation, augmented hospitalization resources, supplement critical-but-finite equipment limits,
№ 2 — PROPAGATION … widespread use of barriers: masks, distancing, decreased patronage to public venues, use of home-delivery; temporary closure of non-essential businesses, entertainment and amusement destinations, popular public ‘mixer go-to locations’. Full-serve (not self-serve) gasoline pumping, government mandates for acceptable required personal barriers in electable public locations.
№ 3 — IMMUNITY … super-fast vaccine trials, production, roll-out, free shots. Letting ‘covid passport’ holders get bck to work immediately. If you caught it, recovered … you’re golden.
№ 4 — FAKE NEWS … is just a terrible waste of community ‘bandwidth’. Squash the conspiracy Luddite crâhp NOW.
№ 5 — RESTORE ECONOMY … Virus “recovered” passports; requiring all workers to use barriers, don’t go stupid on this, just practical.
AND FINALLY… holding those responsible for the absolutely mind-bogglingly-stupid gov’t posturing till now. And future.
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
even 5-10% being immune can take a significant chunk out of the spread rate, prolonging the doubling time. The daily growth of new cases is already slowing, and it’s already fairly low now (1.08x per day) with the current “social distancing” restrictions. If you multiply that by 0.92 (92%, due to 8% immunity) you’re already below 1 and new-case rates will begin shrinking. My numbers show it on track to peak around Apr 21 at around 70-80k new cases per day and then decline to <10k-12k per day in mid May, and double-digits or better in mid-June.
That would put the max number of new cases over a 14-day period at about 1 mil during the peak.
Given the current listed deaths, there was probably 1.33mil cases 2 wk ago (both tested and untested/asymptomatic), so probably already over 1% of the population currently.
My curves tend to look similar to the ones listed here: https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
There’s a reason we don’t all drive tanks to work. Should we do that in order to save 3100 people/month? You monster! Would you really put lives at risk for the cost of a tank for every citizen?
Already been exposed and had mild symptoms. Kids most likely had it too, no symptoms. Anything else?
A Milan University study estimates up to 20 million Italians are covid-19 “cases” including mildly/asymptomatic persons. So case-fatality ratio may eventually be a maximum of 50,000-60,000 deaths/20 million, or 0.25% to 0.30% mortality rate.
The problem with getting to herd immunity, without a vaccine, is that COVID19 has a long recovery time – upwards of a month from exposure in some cases, but at least 2 weeks from first symptoms even with a test to be sure the person is no longer infectious.
Even if we only needed 20% of the ‘herd’ to be immune (which might be true if we maintained social distancing), with a week or less doubling time, by the time 20% are immune we’d be at 80% infected.
You first, go get that natural herd immunity.
Is that the lie that allows you to justify trading the order of magnitude more body counts for a problem free life?
While you’re freaking out over the portion of the economy that isn’t functioning, don’t forget about the larger part that still is-end times are still far off.
While everyone’s personal tragedies are still tragedies, things could be worse so you need to deal with your dealt hand. After all, life is not a risk-free endeavor.
Are we doing enough?
How much of our health-protection policy is being quietly subverted to protection of the economic status quo ante?
The media love to blather about how massive the changes have been. But looking at the list of essential services for my own state and others, they seem over-broad. It looks to me like companies and people working in those areas use that as an excuse to keep working at less than essential things. It’s more a list of loopholes than a protective wall.
Are fast-food places REALLY essential, or could we create arrangements for a few carefully monitored commercial kitchens to prepare food for delivery to those who are unable to prepare food for themselves? Especially considering that studies of Diamond Princess indicated that food service was a big factor in spreading the virus on board?
Do grocery stores really need to be open for customers to come in and handle everything, or could we switch over mostly to delivery? Same for pharmacies.
Do we need to keep liquor stores open, other than for delivery?
Heck, landscape management is listed as essential in my state. There might be emergency situations that need immediate attention, but I still see workers out trimming and cleaning, apparently because they fit under that category.
More panic news, life will slowly start getting back to normal by June, but will peope get back to normal is the question.
Companies should be spending this downtime making their business safer for the public and their workers. Restaurants should be putting up plexiglass dividers on tables, separating booths with plexiglass, adding automatic doors, modifying toilets to not spray, removing air hand driers, and such.
Everyone should be wearing masks. Much harder for it to spread if everyone is wearing masks, and washing their hands often.
We need new better masks designed that make breathing easier, don’t get too humid, and are comfortable. Yet still are N95.
Must start bombing covid19 immediately. In the name of freedom and liberty of course …
No, it does not mean infecting people as quickly as possible. That isn’t what I said and is a stupid idea on the face of it. As soon as possible means letting it run it’s course and taking rational steps for those most at risk until herd immunity builds and/or we get a vaccine. Old people and those most at risk should be staying at home and avoiding the rest of us. The economic damage and the resulting loss in freedoms will be far more damaging than Covid deaths. Life is not risk-free, but we have come to believe it is. I don’t want anyone to die, but shutting the country down with blanket stay-at-home mandates is economic suicide. That is why we don’t have countless empty hospitals during normal times just waiting for pandemics. It doesn’t make economic sense to waste the money.
Just not true. Herd immunity is not a strategy, meaning we planned it. It can occur naturally and can be aided by vaccine. You state that it ONLY WORKS with vaccine and site 2 diseases. You don’t know what it means apparently. It means enough people have immunity to blunt it’s spread in the future. That immunity can come from prior illness and/or vaccine. Vaccine will speed it up, but we can’t keep the world on pause until then. We don’t develop herd immunity to all diseases. Covid only has one piece of DNA so it mutates more slowly. Our bodies will most likely recognize it year after year, whereas flu has multiple strands of DNA and mutates more easily, thus less immunity. We are not in a vacuum in which we only fight diseases. We have an economy that is being destroyed over what will ultimately kill may people, bad flu season kind of deaths, but this is not a zombie apocalypse. Old people and those most at risk should be staying at home and avoiding the rest of us, who need to get back to work. More people could die from the economic fall out than those who die from CCP virus. Balance and perspective. Life is not a risk-free endeavor.
“Herd immunity” is a strategy that only works when there is a vaccine.
We never got natural herd immunity to smallpox or tubercolosis.
Herd immunity as soon as possible would mean infecting people as quickly as possible, spiking need for hospital care and maximizing death. I would call that damaging people permanently.
Looks like the ventilator shortage could be a non-issue. Most people who need them die anyway. So, you get to live a few more days, sedated and incapacitated. We spend millions if not billions making new ventilators, put more people at risk treating patients, and dump billions more down the hole of end-of-life treatment. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/02/826105278/ventilators-are-no-panacea-for-critically-ill-covid-19-patients
Who cares? We need to get herd immunity as soon as possible. That is a much better way to stop future outbreaks of CCP Virus. We may find a vaccine in the future, no guarantees. We can’t afford to keep the world shut down over some people getting sick. Life is hard, but the last 50 years have been exceptionally easy for the West. This is a reality check, not a reason to wreck the economy and damage people permanently.