I’d certainly sign on to a statement that the execution of their plan was very poor in one critical battle ground - nursing homes. Despite that though they so far have not lost the war. They are doing much more poorly in the war than they would have if they had not fought that specific battle with such bad tactics. But they are still on target for their strategic objective: keep rates from reaching points that overwhelm healthcare capacity.
I suspect - no I’'ll go stronger - I predict, that “years” is the right time frame … if ever, as it seems most likely to me that there is no single appropriate response. Likely many different factors impact what happens in any particular country, including random chance. Given that all are of unknown strength of impact controlling for the multitude of variables will be very difficult.
Judging different nations or regions as successes or failures now is of course very very very very premature.
The Swedish approach has those 20 to 64 with antibody evidence of past infection 2.5 times as frequently as those 65+, and with antibody levels overall that reflected roughly 7% of Stockholm having been infected by mid-April. “New confirmed infections” is a squirrelly figure but still using that one would expect that by now, six weeks later, that number has tripled (which of course won’t be confirmed until antibody results are collected two weeks from now -reflecting those infected as of today -and released likely two weeks after that.)
If the basis of their strategy is correct, then they have still succeeded in having a smaller fraction of their higher risk population become infected to date, and are at less risk of as huge of a surge in the Fall and Winter timed with influenza demands on the system than are countries that have had very few cases to date. The basis of their strategy is the perhaps pessimistic position that some X percent of their population will get infected in any case and that what can be controlled is the when (better spread over spring and summer than in fall and winter when influenza is making demands on the systems too), and the who (better lower risk 20 to 64 year olds than more in higher risk 65 and overs) and never had their systems overwhelmed. The antibody numbers show they have not actually completely failed in the second part - but I’d still give them a D - and whether or not they succeed in the first will only be able to said by sometime early next year. Is a country that hits the fall season with possibly 30 to 40% already having antibodies as likely to have as big of a surge as one with hardly any immune?
The optimistic view is that rates can be driven down and kept down throughout the fall and winter with extensive testing contact tracing and reimposition of shut downs as needed going forward until and if a vaccine saves the day. Maybe that view is the correct one and will not cause more harms than goods. Could be.
I don’t know and as sure as some who post here are that they do, no one else does either.
Meanwhile I am very happy that Denmark has opened up schools and is continuing to drop in new cases.
I am a little baffled how people think contact tracing is going to do much with this disease. It sure seems quite contagious and asymptomatic people can spread it. Unless you are in a community with very few cases, it’s going to get wildly hopeless real fast. The two “success stories”, South Korea and New Zealand, mainly worked because they had so little/no community spread when they jumped on it.
I also doubt many people will have a stomach for reimposed shutdowns in 3 months.
I agree with you, it seems completely futile once infections have become so widespread. I believe it has more to do with making those in charge look like they are taking action than it does with actually fixing anything.
I don’t think you need to be quite so cynical. Contact tracing is an important and standard tool in fighting epidemics. This is just at a different magnitude. The problem, like a lot of the “smart” plans, is that they “solve” the problem with untried technology. Like phone apps that let you know you’re within 6’ from a possibly infected person. Don’t worry that phones can’t measure distance that precisely. Don’t worry about the computing power required to track all the movements of a significant amount of the population. Don’t worry that the context of the encounter is usually more important than the distance.
But contact tracing still has information value and can still give early warnings for flare ups.
The key is that contact tracing can’t be half-assed: either the community as a whole buys in and does it, or they don’t, and the contagion spreads and we wait for a few million deaths, along with millions more permanently health-compromised, removed from the workforce, and sucking up federal disability funds until herd immunity kicks in.
Worst case public health and economic outcomes aren’t really inevitable, but the fatalistic lack of faith in public institutions to do their jobs - failure to do what we expected they could and would do - may in fact make such outcomes likely nevertheless.
We’re talking about maybe 1-5% of the population in most places that has the disease. Most people don’t have it, so it’s beyond ridiculous and maddening to see that we’re making blanket assumptions that suggest there’s nothing we can do to protect the 95-99% of people who probably have never come into contact with COVID-19.
1% is 3,000,000 people. Not an easy task to do contact tracing effectively on that many people. Less than 10% of the population really needs protection from this virus.
You aren’t getting it. Community buy is important in any public health crisis like this and will undoubtedly be a problem in the US if it includes downloading a tracking app. But the problems are beyond that. Only 1% of the population infected you guess? How many people did they spend time with in the last 2 weeks? How many people did those people come into contact with? Also, you can’t just track infected people - how do you know if they came into contact with a healthy person if you aren’t tracking him in some way as well?
And, it’s a straight up fact that phones can’t precisely measure 6’ between phones. I’m telling you it’s not feasible not that I don’t trust the government to do right.
I’m aware some people have suffered permanent lung and organ damage after “recovering” from COVID-19, but I was not aware that the number was hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Where are you seeing this figure? Is someone tracking “permanent disability” found in recovered cases? Honestly, given this has only been around a few months, making claims about this either way seems premature.
Thanks Trom. Not quite what I was after but useful and interesting nonetheless. And I think you’re right, that it will be some considerable time before the deeper maths are done, which will unfortunately also mean that the lessons of what we went through won’t be socialised in the same way, so we can all go through the ‘Is social distancing REALLY going to make a difference?’ discussion again next time.
Cosigned. The infection rate for those living in the same household is only on the order of 20%. Yet people are fatalistic about that too.
Also, the population of people that are infectious turns over rapidly. We don’t really care about someone from 2 months ago. If we started today, massive progress could be made in a short time.
The lessons we’ve learned shouldn’t be internalized because a) they haven’t been proven yet and b) the next pandemic may be of a very different nature.
No, it couldn’t. The US is on a bit of a downslope but still had 23,000 new cases yesterday. Imagine the manpower needed to call everyone those 23,000 people interacted with in the past two weeks. That’s one day.
I could personally “look” on a list of 23,000? What is that supposed to mean? Are you suggesting I should make contact tracing my job, rather than pooh pooh ideas?
I’m talking reality. Logistics. I have nothing to argue about in the “team spirit” space.
If so then discussions about whether or not such a thing is otherwise possible or likely to be effective are moot. It is not yet clear even in Denmark that enough people will download the app that their tracing system is to rely on, let alone ever actually enter in their diagnosis or any other information. The whole community here will not have buy-in since that buy-in requires trust of various levels of government, trust that private information so collected could not be hacked and somehow abused, trust in the technology companies, trust that a phone call or email is not in fact a scam or phishing, and a willingness to self-quarantine for 14 days based on being told they’ve been named as “a contact.”
How many of those with that trust would even answer a number we do not recognize? How many of those who pick up would give an unknown person information about their job and who they have been in contact with and then stay home from work and otherwise self-quarantine while feeling well, after they finally got back to work? How many if they figure out who it was who gave out their name might be pissed?
I am not imagining even half an ass. Maybe just the taint. As in it taint realistic and taint gonna happen. As a country I don’t think even half answer the census!
No, that does not mean that then therefore “the contagion spreads and we wait for a few million deaths …” Really.
Eta: sorry, I guess you’re saying if we were all civic minded citizens, they could publish a list of people infected and I could peruse it and notify authorities if I was near them in the past two weeks? That’s blatantly illegal in the US but I guess you could change the laws regarding health information confidentiality.
that “years” is the right time frame … if ever, as it seems most likely to me that there is no single appropriate response. Likely many different factors impact what happens in any particular country, including random chance. Given that all are of unknown strength of impact controlling for the multitude of variables will be very difficult.