That’s actually not known at all. Simplistic calculations using a particular R0 can get numbers in 100k’s (in the US alone let’s assume we’re talking) or it could much less. Also no solid basis to say that the only effect of isolation measures is delay.
Again and others have pointed this out, how much and for how long you gain future immunity to this disease by surviving it is basically unknown.
Your mental model of the economy seems to be a big plate glass window we’re going to smash to get to something behind we really need, but we have little ability to manufacture new plate glass windows. That’s way too pessimistic. As long as the basic elements (rule of law, property rights, neither excessive nor grossly inadequate regulation, skills, education, habits of the labor force, basically sound financial system etc) are intact the economy has tremendous resiliency. Which will be tested, but only eroding those things over time will ‘trash’ the economy with any permanence. Or you could break the financial system more quickly, but we already know how to avoid that (with predictable grumbling about ‘undeserved bailouts’, ‘where’s mine?’, but that will be much less in this case since the crisis is manifestly not the financial system’s fault).
Some may dismiss it because it’s by a conservative think tank writer but I think it’s interesting. Actually this guy is on your general side of the argument (get people back to work now). However his approach IMHO has more basic logic than yours. Saying ‘get everyone back to work though OK 100k’s-1mil or more will die in the US’ is entirely unrealistic. The time line of 6-8 weeks, also unrealistic if it’s really going to spread to a large % of the country, it would much longer. Also ignores the economic effect of the panic from unchecked spread. Then the very questionable idea that everyone will then be immune who survives. This guy’s argument, is that isolation measures may actually result in this thing killing maybe 500 people in the US without draconian measures (some self contradiction there, which measures cause such a low death toll?, which ones are draconian?). Which may be out to lunch but I tend to think relying on one simplistic calc that says 1 million deaths give or take twice or half depending on countermeasures is also really questionable. We have to realize that could be off by orders of magnitude. The 2 or 1/2 factor caused by countermeasures could be also be, maybe it’s 10 times fewer deaths with (admittedly short term economically disruptive) countermeasures. We simply don’t know. It’s decision making under extreme uncertainty.
You and Stranger need to get your story straight. I haven’t see a single model other than this one that says we won’t reach into the 100s of thousands of dead. The most optimistic prediction I’ve seen is a 0.5% mortality rate.
One person pointed it out with a cite that itself says it is very likely anyone who survives this will have immunity. Care to back up your claim that that is unfounded and speculative with something akin to a scientific reference?
You and Stranger seem to agree here. I hold no such faith that our current leadership are up to that task. None. The current leadership has demonstrated quite the opposite to me. If you feel Trump and company are the business and economics geniuses we need to keep us from falling into a deep recession, you can hold onto that.
I skimmed through it. The author says that South Korea is the pinnacle of how to deal with this crisis and represents, essentially, a glimmer of hope. They still have a 0.9% mortality rate. If “only” 10,000,000 get this disease in the US, you are 100,000 dead. If you think we can limit this to 10,000,000 you are delusional. I stand by my numbers that 100s of thousands will die in the US alone from this.
The author calls the incubation time for COVID-19 short. That is a lie. It is 1 to 14 days. The flu is 1 to 4 days. That is part of what makes this disease so difficult.
The author of that article thinks the mortality rate will decline because the first deaths were clustered in a nursing home in Washington, artificially driving up the death toll. As the virus spreads, he argues, more people who are less prone to dying from this will get this and therefore the rate will go down. That is true for a short term. Right now the most vulnerable are sheltering away. The virus is being passed around by those who are least likely to die from it, so the rates might drop. Maybe. But eventually the virus will reach everyone, and the rate will be what it will be. The US statistics to date are strikingly similar to those from Wuhan. To dismiss this as being relatively harmless in a few months is careless, at best.
South Korea has 1,000’s of cases. The number of new cases is now in the double digits per day (it was close to 1,000 new cases/day at one point). What from this gives us any certainty that 1.5 mil people in the ROK (similar proportion to 10mil in the US) will get the disease in the near future?
I think the problem here is ever since statements came out that 30-70% of the world population could get this disease that’s tended in some people’s view changed to ‘will pretty much no matter what’.
I’m not saying I know how many people in the US will get it. But again you brought up S Korea (which might do a better job countering it etc, but still). The fact that new cases have dwindled there so markedly (even more so in China actually, though there’s more of a credibility issue there arguably) I think at least raises a question about the inevitability of millions of cases in the US in less than quite a long time. Depending on the countermeasures.
The main point again is uncertainty. Your argument seems to unfold from ‘let’s assume we know…’ stuff we don’t actually, maybe not even within a couple of orders of magnitude. That people with credentials have published graphs under certain assumptions…doesn’t mean anyone actually knows. And some of the unknown is potentially very positive.
My statement was simply that it’s unknown whether and to what degree and length of time you get immunity from surviving the disease, not a statement that you don’t. If you can’t prove it’s known that you get substantial or virtual immunity, then my statement was correct. But if that’s actually unknown (which it is) that adds a whole dimension of downside risk to letting it run free(er).
Fortunately the economy itself is highly resilient. It doesn’t require great skill on the part of the govt. Mainly avoidance of a liquidity crisis becoming a financial system solvency crisis, basically known territory, and various measures even announced so far (Fed’s emergency lending program extended beyond financial system) on the right track. It will be trying, but the economy fortunately is pretty hard to break (again keeping things like basic incentives, property rights under rule of law, etc intact).
My next-door neighbor apparently has opted for ‘fuck it’. He’s a retired pharmacist and his wife is a retired nurse, so he should know better. He’s still going to the gym, and every morning he goes to the grocery store. The guy is 77. His wife is Latina (Nicaraguan) and has had malaria in her past, along with other medical issues. I really find this to be irresponsible behavior on his part.
Given we have seen thousands of cases of people gaining immunity once they recover, and that other nearly identical viruses do the same thing, it seems pretty far fetched to say it is “just an assumption” that people will have immunity once they recover. So your statement that we don’t know if people get immunity is flat our wrong. We do know.
Your claims that we can’t see the future because there are variables and assumptions is counter to everything science is about. These things are studied, modeled, and characteristics determined. Saying we are assuming the R0 and mortality rates to behave in a way they have already been behaving and measured several times over for this particular virus flies in the face of what these people do for a living. No one is predicting an R0 value or incubation time or mortality rate on this virus based on similar previous viruses. They are measuring those things on this exact virus. So, again, these are not assumptions on this virus. They are known.
What you seem to be saying is that, “Sure, we’ve measured these exact things on this exact virus, but we don’t know if all that will change tomorrow, therefore we don’t know and can’t predict what will happen. For all we know, this thing dies tomorrow and no new cases are found.”
There’s also group 4 - the people who have OTHER medical issues who need hospital care during this period. Like say… a 62 year old man who has a heart attack. These days, they’re like 90% survivable with prompt emergency and hospital care.
But if the ambulance services and hospitals are clogged up with coronavirus patients, there’s every chance that the heart attack victim may not get picked up promptly, nor seen by a doctor promptly, and I’m sure that lessens his chances for survival from pretty high to pretty low.
THAT is the sort of thing we’re trying to prevent here. Ideally we’ll have capacity for all of it, but if we DON’T do this social distancing and self-quarantine stuff, then we’ll almost guarantee that we won’t have capacity.
This is the last post I am going to make to this thread because I’m at my limit of being repeatedly misattributed by someone who is clearly just spoiling to argue rather than participating in a factual discussion, but no, I never said (or feel) that “Trump and company are the business and economics geniuses,“ nor concur with your conclusion that we will experience the same number of casualties in outcome regardless of actions taken now.
The reality is that while the response to the initial outbreak and call for social distancing and isolation was way too slow, and people will die unnecessarily because of it due to an inevitable spike in critical COVID-19 cases overwhelming the health care system (at the expense of other, non-infected patients also needing medical care), there is still value in trying to blunt the spread of the disease as much as possible to spread out the peak, versus your proposed policy of just letting the infection run through the population and kill off the maximum number of people so we can all just get back to business as usual, which frankly isn’t going to happen regardless of outcome of the infection. We will see hundreds of thousands, and possibly a few million dead, but a vigorous effort now to restrict the spread will give time to develop effective treatments, several of which are already in emergency fast-track trials including antiviral favipiravir, Ebola treatment remdesivir, and the HIV retroviral lopinavir and ritonavir (Kaletra). These treatments may be more effective if given early during infection which is another reason to try to retard the spread of the virus to get time to make testing more widely available and evaluate the trials.
We were already due for an economic ‘correction’ even prior to this event, and the hope is that whomever replaces Trump and his clown car of curiosities will have the good sense to institute effective measures to protect the economy against similar disruptions in the future. Meanwhile, Trump’s advisors and many in Congress have (amazingly) latched onto subsidies for workers and businesses as if this wasn’t something that Andrew Yang was campaigning on for two years (and that economists across the political spectrum including Milton Freeman and James Baker III have advocated for) which may at least prevent economic collapse in the interim. Regardless, just letting people die off to get back to normal as quickly as possible isn’t a realistic plan any more than hoping that Mom just doesn’t notice the baseball-sized hole through the kitchen window.
You dodged my question when you clearly claimed we are different and we aren’t. I’m not the one who isn’t interested in scientific discussion when you are the one making false claims about me.
I misattributed nothing when you claimed that the economic impact could be blunted by sound economic policies and guidance. That requires the present government to have that capability, therefore it is not misattributing you to say you said that. You did. Clearly.
I never, not once, claimed to let this run rampant through society. You are the one mis-charactezing what I’m saying and I’m tired of reexplaining it to you.
I’ll type this slowly, then I’m done.
You yourself just indicated that there are measures now being taken which may “at least prevent economic collapse in the interim.” See, when I say there is the possibility of severe economic disruption I’m castigated and told it is pure speculation and fear mongering. When you do it…?
The present plan will necessarily lead to people who need medical care to survive to die. Whether that be people dying from this virus or because of some other condition, there will be fewer beds than people in need of them. Period. End of story. The cite you provided explained that. YOUR CITE. We will overrun the medical capacity even with present social distancing.
Yes! I’m sick and tired of hearing self centered idiots say, “I’m alright, Jack, so I can live my life the same as ever,” when, if they do, they could be shedding viruses around willy nilly without a thought for those they may be infecting. I’m in [del] a [/del] THE high-risk group and I appreciate people who mask when they are near. Unfortunately, my nurses and aides are not considerate like that.
We think we know that people have become immune at this point in time to this particular virus as it currently exists. However, there are two points you are overlooking:
Immunity to many coronaviruses wanes over time; and
Many coronaviruses mutate relatively quickly.
Now, if your immunity to this particular virus wanes slowly, over a period of 40 or 50 years during which time the virus doesn’t mutate significantly, that’s an entirely different picture than if this virus starts mutating quickly or immunity wanes over a period of months rather than decades, or both.
All the studying and modeling and measuring and determining yet done has NOT established whether this particular virus will mutate in ways that change the R0 significantly, nor have they determined whether this is one of the coronaviruses to which immunity isn’t really all that long-lasting.
Fair points. I did a little reading to see what immunity looks like for this and there is certainly some doubt around the longevity and existence of immunity once you get sick. The prevailing thought seems to be about 2 years. Is there other info on coronaviruses that suggest immunity for this virus in general will be less than that? 2 years seems like enough time to get us to herd immunity and have the virus fizzle out.
Mutations are a huge concern, with or without immunity. If this thing continues to mutate to a point that no one ever has immunity when it comes back around, we could be dealing with this for a very, very long time. Not sure how quickly vaccines could be against something mutating that quickly. Is there any data on that?
Basically, experiments with previous more benign coronaviruses show antibodies waning significantly within a year, but despite that none of the test subjects had any any symptoms when exposed to the virus a year later.
That’s basically what the influenza viruses do, and why we get a new flu shot every year. Basically, the researchers try to figure out which strains of flu will be most common in the upcoming year, and try to match this year’s vaccine to what will be circulating. Some years they do a really good job, and some years not so much. The 2009 pandemic was due to a newly-emerged variant, designated influenza A (H1N1)pdm09, to which very few under the age of 65* had any immunity. The novel variant was first detected in April 2009, and the first vaccines specifically for it were administered in October, although they were not widely available until after Thanksgiving. The 2010 flu shots included the influenza A (H1N1)pdm09 among the strains in that vaccine, and variants have been included in most (all?) subsequent years.
*The 2009 pandemic was notable in that it primarily affected younger people; many of the elderly had some immunity to it, suggesting that a similar strain had circulated, perhaps in the 1940s or 50s, and then disappeared.
So I went to some grocery stores yesterday. Even though I stood several feet away from the next person in line, people crowded right next to me from behind.
And when I got take-out from a restaurant, it seemed as though the staff and customers were oblivious - standing close to me, touching me when they took my credit card and handed me the food, etc. Do we know if a few seconds’ contact can result in exposure?
So I went to some grocery stores yesterday. Even though I stood several feet away from the next person in line, people crowded right next to me from behind.
And when I got take-out from a restaurant, it seemed as though the staff and customers were oblivious - standing close to me, touching me when they took my credit card and handed me the food, etc. Do we know if a few seconds’ contact can result in exposure?
So I went to some grocery stores yesterday. Even though I stood several feet away from the next person in line, people crowded right next to me from behind.
And when I got take-out from a restaurant, it seemed as though the staff and customers were oblivious - standing close to me, touching me when they took my credit card and handed me the food, etc. Do we know if a few seconds’ contact can result in exposure?
Do we know if a few seconds’ contact can result in exposure?