*I read this article. Here's a noteworthy quote in the bottom of it. The article is about the timeline of Italy, during the coronavirus pandemic:
"Italy looked at the example of China ... not as a practical warning, but as a 'science fiction movie that had nothing to do with us.' And when the virus exploded, Europe ... 'looked at us the same way we looked at China.'"
— Sandra Zampa, undersecretary of Italy's Health Ministry, to the NY Times
https://www.axios.com/italy-coronavi...897494dc6.html
You likely have heard about Italy's overflowing hospitals, as well as how they've ceased providing respirators to anyone over 60.
So, there's the timeline of Italy's fight against the coronavirus:
Jan. 31: Italy suspends flights to China and declares a national emergency after two cases are confirmed in Rome (2 confirmed cases).
Feb. 20: A man in Lombardy tests positive after previously leaving the hospital without a test. He is believed to have spread the disease widely before developing severe symptoms (3 cases).
Feb. 23: Small towns hit by the outbreak are placed under quarantine. Carnival celebrations and some soccer matches are canceled (150 cases).
March 4: Schools and universities are closed (3,089 cases).
March 8: Several northern provinces are placed under lockdown (7,375 cases).
March 9: The lockdown is extended nationwide (9,172 cases).
March 11: All restaurants and bars are closed (12,462 cases).
March 22: Factories are closed and all nonessential production is halted (59,138 cases).
https://www.axios.com/italy-coronavi...897494dc6.html
Notice that Italy is doing a lot. There are sources that say Italy has finally flattened the curve of the virus...but I wouldn't be confident closed factories and "all nonessential production" would be easily sustainable...although I could imagine all bars being closed as being sustainable. So, Italy's been fighting it since the beginning. They've currently locked down more types of businesses than we have...and that, of course, hasn't stopped the disease's spread...just slowed it down nicely...hopefully:
By today, Italy has reached more than 100,000 (101,739) coronavirus cases, the highest rate in Europe since the start of the emergency. But at the same time the pace of infection appears to be slowing down, and the number of recovered people has peaked to 1,590 in a single day. That is why the country is optimistic that the worst has passed. https://www.forbes.com/sites/irenedo.../#5e50f3cb4ed3
So imagine the U.S. having to not only close down bars and gyms and schools...but factories...to fight the virus...after we've been forced to stop giving respirators to...not just people over 60, but anyone over 50...because we, hypothetically, did less to stop it than Italy.
And that's why I got so terrified when Trump suggested opening up areas of the country by Easter.
We are different nations. Things work differently here...but I don't know why anyone would consider it implausible that even with our current efforts...we'll end up like Italy soon, running out of respirators and with flooded hospitals and having to not provide anyone with medical care over age 60.
If we do less to fight the virus...if we open up more businesses...we're of course going to have all the more problems.
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We can expect a doubling of cases every six days, according to several epidemiological studies. Confirmed cases may appear to rise faster (or slower) in the short term as diagnostic capabilities are ramped up (or not), but this is how fast we can expect actual new cases to rise in the absence of substantial mitigation measures.
That means we are looking at about 1 million U.S. cases by the end of April; 2 million by May 7; 4 million by May 13; and so on.
As the health care system becomes saturated with cases, it will become increasingly difficult to detect, track, and contain new transmission chains. In the absence of extreme interventions like those implemented in China, this trend likely won’t slow significantly until hitting at least 1% of the population, or about 3.3 million Americans.
What does a case load of this size mean for health care system? That’s a big question, but just two facets — hospital beds and masks — can gauge how Covid-19 will affect resources.
The U.S. has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people (South Korea and Japan, two countries that have seemingly thwarted the exponential case growth trajectory, have more than 12 hospital beds per 1,000 people; even China has 4.3 per 1,000). With a population of 330 million, this is about 1 million hospital beds. At any given time, about 68% of them are occupied. That leaves about 300,000 beds available nationwide.https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/...wers-covid-19/
Now that's just guesswork...but it's spooky guesswork. I'm not sure that 6 days factor works out...but remember that this is moving up fast. It's gone from 1 sick person in the U.S. to well over a hundred thousand people since January 21.
Let's say half the population gets it quickly...enough that we'll be able to develop the sort of partial herd immunity the people who advocate such rapid spreading crave, making the spread much easier to contain. That's about 170 million sick people. Let's say 5% of them need hospitalization...half the 10% hospitalization rate estimate you'll find here and there...keeping in mind it could be considerably lower than that in reality due to the tricky nature of this virus to study.
If we just let it spread all at once...that could mean 8 million, five-hundred thousand people in need of hospitalization, and only three-hundred thousand hospital beds.
That is insane...and that reveals how the prospect of "just letting it spread out everywhere and not worrying about it" is a proposal that nobody except people bad at math, or who haven't thought much about this consider.
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So...I think it's pretty clear the above scenario is not an option...so much as a last resort we may consider if we have the choice between starving, eating our shoes for protein, or opening up a few more businesses.
However, I figure we've got at least 2 more options. I'll call the above, option A. The other 2 options I'll call option B and option C.
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Option B: Mimic China. Completely forget about lossening up the quarantines and social distancing. Do more of it, instead. Never resist it, including if we have to become something of a proto-police state for a few weeks. If the cops wander around telling people they're not supposed to gather in crowds...accept it. Maybe even encourage it. Accept mandated business closings by the government. Accept whatever stronger measures the government takes to tighten security against the virus, no matter what they are.
There have been various Asian nations that have genuinely beaten this virus. South Korea, Taiwan...those are our fellow individuality-loving nations. They beat the virus while it was still small, using precise strikes and local quarantines guided by lots of testing, combined with a society that trusts its government and which is willing to work together. They could hone all their nations' resources in on one spot at a time, killing the virus as it pops up like a laggy game of wac-a-mole.
China's really the only one of those successful Asian nations with a situation that's comparable to ours. In China, their outbreak got big, like ours. I don't know exactly how they did it...but I'm assuming it wasn't real subtle. I have a vision of president Xi Jinping dickering around for awhile...waking up one morning to the news...spitting out his coffee upon hearing it...picking up a sledgehammer and just pounding anything he thought resembled a coronavirus until the handle broke in a blind, slavering rage.
China will ban entry to all foreigners, including non-nationals with valid visas and residence permits, from midnight on Friday in a move to curb the numbers of imported coronavirus cases.
The other measures announced by the foreign ministry include reducing the number of international flights and limiting the capacity on board to 75 percent.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/...081851119.html
Hong Kong (CNN)A strict ban on the consumption and farming of wild animals is being rolled out across China in the wake of the deadly coronavirus epidemic, which is believed to have started at a wildlife market in Wuhan. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/05/asia/...hnk/index.html
Here are some Chinese citizens seemingly attacking police officers as they try to enter a neighboring province after movement restrictions are loosened. I'm not sure why they're annoyed...but I bet it has something to do with the events of the past month or so.
https://www.newsweek.com/china-resid...lifted-1494825
And if you think there are more reasonable methods for dealing with the coronavirus than developing a pseudo police state, or telling 7 million people or so to "suck it up" when they need hospitalization...you're going to hate the last option too. Here it is:
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Option C: flattening the curve:
You'll hear the idea of "flattening the curve" of the spread of the virus encouraged by many experts. That refers to lowering the rate which the disease spreads. The goal of this is to keep hospitals from overflowing with patients.
It does, however, not involve us turning into a proto-police state. You'll still have to keep businesses closed down like we have now. We're not in the type of proto-police state that can actually stop the virus yet...despite how much people complain about it. We're still in the
"Hopefully this will keep the hospitals from overflowing too much...but most of the population is still probably going to get the coronavirus at some point" stage.
Our nation has the potential to become so very, very much more restrictive and unpleasant if we REALLY want to fight this thing hard...which I would recommend doing. Putting no ceiling on how controlling we let our government be over us to help us fight the virus seems like a win-win to me. Even if we can't beat it that way, it'll still free up more hospital beds. However...that's not what this topic is about. We're talking about the more mild, "flattening the curve" method.
How flattening the curve works:
It did in 1918, when a strain of influenza known as the Spanish flu caused a global pandemic. To see how it played out, we can look at two U.S. cities — Philadelphia and St. Louis — Drew Harris, a population health researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, told NPR.org.
In Philadelphia, city officials ignored warnings from infectious disease experts that the flu was already spreading in the community. The city instead moved forward with a massive parade that gathered hundreds of thousands of people together, Harris said.
"Within 48, 72 hours, thousands of people around the Philadelphia region started to die," Harris said. Ultimately, about 16,000 people from the city died in six months.
In St. Louis, meanwhile, city officials quickly implemented social isolation strategies. The government closed schools, limited travel and encouraged personal hygiene and social distancing. As a result, the city saw just 2,000 deaths — one-eighth of the casualties in Philadelphia.
The city, now known for its towering Gateway Arch, had successfully flattened the curve.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavi...the-curve.html
Flattening the curve of outbreaks saves lots more lives...but it last longer for the disease to be done with the area too. The above information may or may not be a bit misleading. I'm not sure if they've taken into account the greater amount of time people in St. Louis were dying. Elsewhere, I saw something that said that half the percentage of people that died in Philadelphia died in St. Louis, rather than an eighth...but that could be inaccurate too. The point is...a lot fewer people die when your hospitals don't over flow and when you don't have hordes of sick people sprawling everywhere at once. Furthermore, you'll have fewer doctors getting the chance to get sick simultaneously.
I assume this is the method that most of the western world is going to take...because we won't have the will do to the Chinese government thing, and hopefully we'll be smart enough not to just let it spread everywhere at once.
It's noteworthy that, at least a few days ago, we in the U.S. hadn't "flattened the curve" yet...but I'm hoping that's the result of the recent changes not taking much affect yet, and people not quite being pushed into action enough yet. That'll hopefully change as more people get the disease.
https://time.com/5809038/coronavirus-flatten-curve/
Note that Italy's curve may well be actually flattening...due to it closing down so much of its economy.
In the case of our coronavirus...we may very well not be able to beat it through "flattening the curve" or...we may beat it but only after a high percentage of people get it...or we may beat it after a lengthy series of smaller, and smaller outbreaks we can stomp down through precise strikes and quarantines, keeping most of the country open, but either way, "flattening the curve" results in fewer hospitals overflowing.
The R naught of COVID-19 is thought to be about 2.6 so it is likely we will need 60-80% of the population immune to this disease before we stop the pandemic. As we see in figure 1, we don’t expect this amount of exposure and thus immunity to COVID-19 after a single wave. Expect multiple waves of epidemic in your community.
Again, according to the WHO, we are beyond containment. We will not eradicate COVID-19; we need to learn how to live with it.
https://www.fiphysician.com/flatten-the-curve/
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So...regardless of whether we just focus on "flattening the curve" or resign ourselves to becoming a police state to just try to get everything over with as quickly as possible...I think what we absolutely have to avoid doing, is opening up large swathes of our economy too early.
So...with the current "flattening the curve" strategy we're using...that could be months. On a side note...I have no idea why Trump was suggesting that we open large segments of the economy up by Easter. Hopefully it had something to do with assisting the stock market, or economy or something. I hope to god he wasn't being serious.
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