Coronavirus

[Zombie]

The original discussion on flattening the curve really was just an effort not to overwhelm hospital resources. The diagram below points this out very literally. The eventual number of infections in the population isn't expected to be reduced. Instead, those infections are being spread over a longer period of time (the speed of the spread is being slowed) so that hospitals can handle the load. Eventually, the same number of people are expected to be exposed to the virus--maybe as much as 50% or 70% of the population will be exposed within the next 12 months.

The only way to have prevented this would be to ban all air traffic into the U.S. back in December and then test and hard quarantine everyone who enters the country. That didn't happen.

Now a combination of government resources and private companies have mobilized to produce masks, face shields, medical clean suits, makeshift hospitals, ICU beds and ventilators. The hospitals have been gearing up while the socially distanced population has slowed the spread to buy time. That's all that's happening.

That was the pressing concern yes, so that's what dominated the conversation at the time. But I thought it was pretty well understood that there is a second stage of contact tracing and mass testing that needs to happen once we've got the capability for it.

As for shutting everything down in December + testing and quarantining I don't think we would have needed to start that far back. Again, other countries have managed to contain the outbreak without having to have done so. Our problem is that we didn't have their testing ability, nor do we currently have their tracing capabilities. Hence the shutdown until we get something like that in place.

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

Extreme social distancing ought to reduce the number of new infections to the point where we can test and trace early and limit the spread of new outbreaks, and life can go back to something approaching normal. This is basically the blueprint S Korea and other Asian nations have followed.

This is what the NBA has been discussing--"What if we isolated all the players at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas? What if we tested everyone every 24 hours and isolated people if they test positive? Could the players who are clean play games inside the casino facility without fans? We'd keep them away from their families for 75 days to play out the playoffs."

Most people can't live in a bubble like that and function normally. You can only do that temporarily. Eventually, the playoffs will end and players will go home and get exposed to the virus.

Once the virus was spreading geometrically throughout the U.S. population, there's really no way to contract trace and isolate those infected. South Korea was prepared and got on top of the virus before it spread throughout the general population. I don't see that happening in a country as large as the U.S. Even now, the U.S. has tested 3 million people in total, or less than 1% of the population.

 

[Zombie]

This is what the NBA has been discussing--"What if we isolated all the players at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas? What if we tested everyone every 24 hours and isolated people if they test positive? Could the players who are clean play games inside the casino facility without fans? We'd keep them away from their families for 75 days to play out the playoffs."

Most people can't live in a bubble like that and function normally. You can only do that temporarily. Eventually, the playoffs will end and players will go home and get exposed to the virus.

Once the virus was spreading geometrically throughout the U.S. population, there's really no way to contract trace and isolate those infected. South Korea was prepared and got on top of the virus before it spread throughout the general population. I don't see that happening in a country as large as the U.S. Even now, the U.S. has tested 3 million people in total, or less than 1% of the population.

When I say something approaching normal that doesn't include a lot of things, including live sports, and may still preclude things like gatherings of groups larger than fifty or a hundred people. But you're right that our testing capabilities are going to have to skyrocket. It's not impossible, but its going to take a lot of work and some ingenuity. I think the goal is going to be a tightrope walk where we allow more people to go back to work while keeping measures in place to keep the R0 at 1 or close to it, which will make contact tracing feasible.

I'd feel a lot better if we had a concrete plan in place right now as to exactly what we're going to be doing, especially as the calls to reopen the economy get louder.

This article goes into some details of a few plans that have been put forward. None of this stuff is impossible, but I question if we have the political leadership in our country to get it done.

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215...ing-economy-recession-depression-unemployment

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

That was the pressing concern yes, so that's what dominated the conversation at the time. But I thought it was pretty well understood that there is a second stage of contact tracing and mass testing that needs to happen once we've got the capability for it.

As for shutting everything down in December + testing and quarantining I don't think we would have needed to start that far back. Again, other countries have managed to contain the outbreak without having to have done so. Our problem is that we didn't have their testing ability, nor do we currently have their tracing capabilities. Hence the shutdown until we get something like that in place.

Tens of thousands of people from China flew into the U.S. beginning in December. Hundreds of them, at a minimum, had the virus, and that's what seeded it in the U.S. The early hotspots were in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York where most of these people from China entered the country. After that happened, the virus was spreading among people who had no symptoms and didn't know they had the virus. In response, you would have to test literally everyone and isolate them quickly to contain the spread. That's tens of millions of tests administered each day. No one was (or is) prepared to do that.

Once the virus spread widely throughout the country, the opportunity to contain it had passed. New York, for example, now has roughly 200,000 confirmed cases and many more that haven't been confirmed. There's no point trying to contact trace. The virus is everywhere there. People have to distance themselves from one another to try to avoid infection as best they can for as long as they can stand it. Eventually, they'll come out because they have to earn a living. They'll likely get exposed at that point. However, hospitals should be ramped up with PPE, ICU capacity and ventilators to service the ones who get seriously ill.

 

[Zombie]

Tens of thousands of people from China flew into the U.S. beginning in December. Hundreds of them, at a minimum, had the virus, and that's what seeded it in the U.S. The early hotspots were in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York where most of these people from China entered the country. After that happened, the virus was spreading among people who had no symptoms and didn't know they had the virus. In response, you would have to test literally everyone and isolate them quickly to contain the spread. That's tens of millions of tests administered each day. No one was (or is) prepared to do that.

Once the virus spread widely throughout the country, the opportunity to contain it had passed. New York, for example, now has roughly 200,000 confirmed cases and many more that haven't been confirmed. There's no point trying to contact trace. The virus is everywhere there. People have to distance themselves from one another to try to avoid infection as best they can for as long as they can stand it. Eventually, they'll come out because they have to earn a living. They'll likely get exposed at that point. However, hospitals should be ramped up with PPE, ICU capacity and ventilators to service the ones who get seriously ill.

S Korea had their first confirmed case the same day the US did. I know there are a lot of differences between the two countries, but even with a lot of travel to and from China and a city with pop density on par with New York they were able to navigate this without the shut down (or loss of lives) we're seeing here. Also fwiw most of the cases in New York and elsewhere in the US appear to be of the strain that made it here from Europe. It clearly wasn't possible for us to get on it as quickly as they did, for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean we can't at some point, hopefully in the coming weeks/few months.

I feel like you aren't really getting what I'm saying though. Of course we can't switch tomorrow to just testing and contact tracing, we have too many active cases and no plan. What I'm talking about is what will happen after the curve has neared the bottom of the downward slope. In the meantime we need much more robust financial support for people. It's absurd that we haven't either passed a temporary UBI or had the government step in and subsidize payroll for companies so they don't lay people off.

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

This article goes into some details of a few plans that have been put forward. None of this stuff is impossible, but I question if we have the political leadership in our country to get it done.

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215...ing-economy-recession-depression-unemployment

I'm reading the Vox article. What I think will happen is that industries will restart, one after another, with some semi-permanent rules to manage person-to-person contact.

Beyond that, however, I think the CDC and NIH have conceded that this covid19 will remain at large, it will continue to circulate along with all the other flu-like viruses, and eventually most people will be exposed to it. Assuming the virus doesn't mutate too much for the worse, fewer than 10% of those infected will require some form of treatment or hospitalization, and fewer than 10% of those who need medical treatment will pass away. High-risk groups, such as the elderly or people with conditions such as diabetes, will need to continue to isolate themselves for their own protection. Hospitals will have to organize their resources longer term to manage infectious disease as a greater priority.

Even if the U.S. instituted the mobile-tracking solution that's being used in Singapore, there would be a huge shortfall in people agreeing to comply with it. As the Vox article's data indicates, many people would refuse to install the mobile app because they don't want the government tracking them and telling them they need to quarantine. They would prefer to just get infected and bear the consequences. The vast majority of them will feel some symptoms for a week or two, like the flu, and then they'll go on about their lives.

Even when a vaccine comes out, a significant number of people will refuse to take it, I'd imagine.

 

[JazzyFresh]

 

[One Brow]

..

Thank you for pointing out how correct we were.

 

[JazzyFresh]

Thank you for pointing out how correct we were.

Lol you guys were saying 75,000,000 people were going to get sick. You're flat out lying now to cover you're flat out stupid argument.

I guarantee you that you won't find one post of your guys that says the exponential growth will flatten out. Not one.

Let's see it.

 

[JazzyFresh]

Except, it is. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

Look at the graph labeled "Cumulative total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States by report date, January 12, 2020 to March 30, 2020, at 4pm ET"

4,226 cases on 3/16
44,183 cases on 3/23
163,539 on 3/30

Let's downplay to keep is simple, and call that a 3-fold increase in a week, and 160,000 cases right now. How many cases would there be in three weeks?

4,320,000.

In another 3 weeks?

116,640,000

Will it triple every week? Probably not. Will the number jump by larger amounts every day? Yes, for quite while.

See. This is exactly what you were saying. Lololololol

"Will it triple every week? Probably not. Will the number jump by larger amounts every day? Yes, for quite while."

My graph starts the same day you posted this... April 1st the very day the curve started to flatten.

 

[stitches]

WTF is wrong with you? Don't you ever tire of spreading BS? Of course the exponential growth stopped... when you locked down most of the country. THIS IS THE GOAL OF LOCKING DOWN THE COUNTRY AND THE WORLD! If you didn't lock it up, the exponential growth would have continued until herd immunity was reached. Pretty much EVERYWHERE in the world the spread of the virus followed a 35% daily increase(i.e. doubling about every 3 days) when there were no measures taken.

 

[JazzyFresh]

WTF is wrong with you? Don't you ever tire of spreading BS? Of course the exponential growth stopped... when you locked down most of the country. THIS IS THE GOAL OF LOCKING DOWN THE COUNTRY AND THE WORLD! If you didn't lock it up, the exponential growth would have continued until herd immunity was reached. Pretty much EVERYWHERE in the world the spread of the virus followed a 35% daily increase(i.e. doubling about every 3 days) when there were no measures taken.

That's exactly what I've been saying lololol. You all were arguing just to argue. You all 100% said exponential growth could cause 75,000,000 cases and I...me... Was saying the AVERAGE exponential growth was 2 weeks and theres no possible way we hit 75,000,000. You told me I can use averages but I was 100% correct.