All the conversations going on about this virus yet we seldom hear anything about strategies based on statistics. Would it not make sense to monitor regions and only have shutdowns when massive out breaks are looking. Shouldn’t we be opening up areas so that hospitals stay at or near about 80% capacity. Should we not be talking about ways to secure our old an vulnerable so the rest of the people can get back to living normal lives and herd immunity can do it’s thing allowing the old and vulnerable t go back to normal living much sooner?
I think the answer is that nobody really knows how this disease will play out. We are using the best in the business to figure out our best estimate, but we might be way off.
For example, say the hospital capacity in an area is 50% so we open things up, and in two days, we are at 90% capacity, we are too late. People will still keep getting sicker from that exposure and it two more days we are at 160% capacity.
At this point in the game, you might be right or others might be right. Just no way to tell.
I cannot agree with the assumptions the OP made.
We have a heck of a lot of data on this disease, and the professionals are doing their job of interpreting it. The problem is just that nobody’s listening to them.
All of the above would be great IF the statistics and science suggested it was possible. The reality is the converse. The science says - this won’t work and will lead to catastrophe. The disconnect is that the popular media isn’t very good at getting this message across. Depending upon what your chosen media for news is.
There is actually a huge amount of work done modelling and working the statistics. It isn’t all that hard to find. The core problem is that this is a very new virus and we just don’t have robust numbers yet. It is a problem in progress. So there are significant amounts of uncertainty in the analysis, and worse, significant sensitivity to some of the less well understood parameters. But even the best case scenarios are very depressing. The simple known parameters of the virus are enough to know that open up and protect the vulnerable strategies are very unlikely to work.
Can you please cite the scientists that are recommending this approach? It is my (uncited) impression that scientists think we’re not doing enough shut-down, so if you have a scientist in mind that is stating otherwise, I’d like to see it. Hopefully, he or she has expertise in this field.
In the future I will try to take note of who is saying this. I am seeing this a lot by people who should know what they are talking about.
They’re there if you look for them and they are what the sensible governors are basing their stay-at-home orders for.
Massive outbreaks are currently looming everywhere. The time for setting up for monitoring and local shutdowns was over even before the media fight over whether this was a hoax. And even weeks ago it would have been difficult due to the lack of tests and testing facilities.
That requires either a misplaced trust in the accuracy of our current models or a disregard for the human cost if we should be wrong. It also ignores that the current approach will have fewer people get sick overall, not just fewer at the same time.
No. Because although the old and vulnerable are indeed the majority of those who die, the people who are hospitalized and likely will suffer long term lung damage are a vastly larger group.
What you are suggesting is not based on science, it’s based on an embarrassingly poor understanding of the situation and a disregard for 95% of the things we do know about this virus and pandemic.
What people? What are their credentials? What data are they using, and how are they interpreting it or using it to make projections?
I guarantee that ever epidemiologist in the country is looking at Italy and Spain (and the mass graves visible from space in Iran, which BTW has over 70% of their population in the 15-65 age bracket and only about 5% over 65 years of age…so much for this being only “an old person’s disease”) and saying, “We need to maintain isolation and distancing measures to prevent an overwhelming peak.” What data their is from testing is incomplete, and the data from actual hospitalizations and deaths is not encouraging to say the least.
Given the latency period of this virus from infection until symptoms start to appear (which is 10-14 days and maybe as long as 21 days in some people) and how people are clearly infectious days prior to exhibiting signs and symptoms, waiting until ICU wards are at 80% capacity is a recipe for catastrophe.
Stranger
Were you seeing those people in the media?
The “Keep things running and put on the breaks only when it’s predicted the need will hit hospital capacity” is by the way the strategy Britain was on for a week or so, until enough experts and the reality of infection increase contradicted Boris’ pet experts and the UK went to “stay-at-home”.
That Boris is now in the ICU on supplemental oxygen is of course not directly correlated with his early strategy, but his inability to take a deadly disease seriously definitely is. Boris Johnson vows coronavirus will not stop him shaking hands (That’s the Mirror, but it had the best headline and it was widely reported.)
My friend posted an article on FB last night, an opinion piece by an epidemiologist who literally said “I don’t understand why we’re trying to flatten the curve.” The title was something like “The Lockdown Is Making This Worse”. My friend posted it because she’s in the same mindset of the OP. The epidemiologist wanted us all to go out and infect each other like a chicken pox party.
The guy also said something in the article like “I don’t have to make things up because I’m not in the government.” I forget what it was now, but you could tell the guy had a political chip on his shoulder.
Three or four of us quickly rebutted the article, letting the friend know that the goal isn’t to make it go away faster, it’s to make sure more people don’t die by completely overwhelming our hospitals quickly. I pointed out that there’s a daily press conference in Ohio where the director of health points this out, witha huge graph making it pretty clear. The friend said she watches those press conferences and wishes the politicians would start listening to scientists (I guess the Doctor isn’t a scientist but a politician being that she’s part of the Governor’s cabinet?)
Funny thing is, she’s an anti-vaxxer. I guess maybe the anti-vaxxers are really pushing the herd immunity stuff now.
Anyway, I can’t find this article because about 10 mins after she posted it and we started refuting it, she deleted it.
I’m guessing it’s the same article or interview the OP read.
Any unspecific reference to “the media” is meaningless so the rest can safely be ignored.
I will be more specific, everything they have said on the subject
That is super-specific! “They” have said things on some subject. So, since science is the only way to go, not other media, YouTube videos, or Facebook posts (all forms of media), it would probably easiest if you just linked to the peer-reviewed studies that conflict with what “they” are saying. Otherwise, you’ll just be linking to the media.
“They” include Breitbart, Fox, InfoWars, Daily Caller/Signal/Wire, Facebook, NY Post, Sinclair, Newsmax, Drudge, Twitchy, InstaPundit, One America, and other assorted [del]liars[/del] questionable voices. You specified no media by name; I hope you’re skeptical of those outright propaganda sources. Or are they better than reality?
This is a miserable sickness even with a typical moderate case. Worst illness most people have ever experienced. People are afraid of it for good reason.
That reality, and not just risk of death, is why movies and restaurants were deserted even before the ordered closures. Same with canceling vacation travel. Government closure orders just reinforced what most people were already doing.
Except in a few super hot spots, hospital utilization is down. Across the country, plunging revenues from canceled nonemergency medical appointments have forced hospitals to furlough or cut the pay of doctors, nurses and other staff. This isn’t because a politician ordered it. It’s fundamentally because people without COVID-19 won’t go to a hospital that has COVID-19 patients unless it is an immediate necessity. There no we, as in government, that can engineer hospital utilization rates.
,
You and a few of your friends, may be willing to go back to Disney World. But there won’t be enough to make it profitable – because the rest of us aren’t going to risk it.
If you want an actual conservative plan on how to get us moving back to normal, check out, on google, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Here is one of the rare Republicans actually making the moves needed to get us back:
Why Charlie Baker Thinks ‘Contact Tracing’ Cases May Help Mass. Slow — Or Stop — COVID-19
I presume you mean “looming.”(?)
That’s what the U.S. did, mostly, and that’s why we’re eating a foot-long shit sandwich right now. Preparing for an outbreak is much better than reacting to one.
So, the media formerly known as “Fair and Balanced”?
Stranger
This article?
Quoting
…Wittkowski replied: “Well, I’m not paid by the government, so I’m entitled to actually do science.”
It’s not too hard to find a quack who wants attention or profit from fake cures etc. It’s also possible to quote out of context or just outright lie. He seems to have good qualifications, but maybe he’s gone Josef Mengele for some reason.