How old is your mother? My father was just old enough to get it as a child, not old enough to experience the epidemic the way an adult would. And he would have been in his mid-80s now if he was still alive.
Not only is this not at all likely, it is patently untrue. This is a new virus, meaning there is no preexisting immunity in the population. Cite.
Also, it appears that the virus is spreading more rapidly in those with mild symptoms, or not yet showing symptoms.
And just because you contract the virus from someone who only has mild symptoms does not mean that you will experience mild symptoms.
The first half of your objection is trivial. You are basically saying that exponential growth stops once everyone is infected (or dead). No shit. :rolleyes: The point is that we are trying to avoid everyone getting infected…or at least slow the rate of new infections down so as to not overwhelm the hospitals and available medical treatment.
The second half of your statement makes no sense. Because it only takes one person to spread the virus, and because there are lots and lots of cities and communities of people in the world, why do you believe that there can’t be more than 50 times the number of cases outside of your hypothetical city?
This is especially true with modern travel. In the last few months, I’ve traveled to every New England state, Florida, Utah, Colorado, British Columbia, and the Bahamas. I’m just one person. That’s why they are shutting travel down and telling people to stay home.
I’ll observe, not compare. My aunt, born just over a century ago, had childhood polio and hobbled on crutches. My next door neighbor girl, and the daughter of one of my dad’s co-workers, both my own age and whose families we socialized with, survived in iron lungs. Infantile paralysis, polio, was common, obvious, and terrible, a constant horror for parents during the 20th century’s first half. The Koprowski, Salk, and Sabin vaccines changed the world.
is not … NOT … even if that was a consensus of most experts … a claim that you made.
As far as growth … it is NOT that “that exponential growth stops once everyone is infected (or dead)”. A very basic model of growth is the SIR model - there are three compartments: those susceptible to the disease (S); those infected with it and spreading it (I); and those who have immunity to it such as because of having recovered from infection (inclusive of asymptomatic infection). As R increases there is less exposure of S to I and growth slows down. It is the basic of herd immunity. Yeah F-P is still mistaken - but you aint quite right either.
Almost but not quite. Not “more rapidly.” More commonly - which makes perfect sense because once people are sick they quarantine.
Many times more than we know are infected also of course implies that the infection fatality rate would be several times smaller. It remains a key question: how big is the iceberg?
The same article also indicates what works and what does not:
From your link:
I’m not sure what your point is.
There are currently just over 7,000 reported cases in the U.S. The population of the U.S. is over 300 million.
There are plenty of uninfected people in the country (S) such that exponential growth can continue for longer than any of us would like.
Yes, of course as R increases, exponential growth will slow. However, in the absence of a vaccine or other controls (like social distancing), the only way that R can increase to the point that it affects that exponential growth is for a significant fraction of the population to become infected. This will likely result in the death of millions of people.
One possible difference, as I understand it:
More rapidly: One person gets infected in the morning. He feels unwell in the evening (that is rapidity). He stays at home the next morning, has only had the chance to infect X people before self-quarantining.
More commonly: One person gets infected in the morning of day one. He feels well at least one week, maybe two or does not show any simptoms at all, but can still transmit the virus to others (Y) that may (or may not) develop simptoms. Those people will also transmit the virus to more people (Z) before feeling unwell. More people get infected and more people get sick than in the first case.
Y > X
Y + Z > X
When I read “more rapidly” I understand it to mean that individuals who are asymptomatic are more contagious than those who are symptomatic. Best estimate is closer to half as contagious.
But if we are talking about which population in aggregate is responsible for more of the spread, then the asymptomatic, minimally symptomatic, and prodromal, in aggregate are spreading it more, simply because there are so many more of them, most uncounted and unrecognized, and because those more symptomatic are not out and about at all.
Sorry to be cynical, but in about three months time, when there are somewhere between half a million and 2.5 million dead in just the USA alone (if we do nothing), we won’t be hearing the “no big deal” argument so much any more.
What I haven’t seen is mention of how this is too early to measure mortality. The disease has not run its course in most of the recently infected and many of the people shown as infected today may be dead next week.
The other day I was making that same point on my FB wall, and mentioned that my sister-in-law was part of that effort, only to have a Doper (I don’t recall his screen name) chime in saying the following:
I agree it might be higher than the flu but the death rate in Korea is closer the the truth than 5% or whatever other extraordinarily high number people are throwing around.
But even in Korea, the health care system was so overloaded that diagnosis of COVID 19 in mild cases is almost impossible because health care worker had to take care of people who were really ill. If you had a manageable symptoms, you were encouraged just to stay home and stay isolated.
