# When does it end?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796>\
**Category:** The Quarantine Zone\
**Tags:** covid-quarantine\
**Created:** [April 1, 2020, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796 "2020-04-01T12:23:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2020, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/61 "2020-04-02T14:33:44Z")

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> [@cmosdes](#):
>
> Some unused, sure. But right now there is way more unused than is needed to be available. We can be utilizing that capacity NOW instead of backing up the system when it is overloaded in 3 weeks.

The problem with your proposal, or just one of them really, is you’re assuming that this can be controlled in some precise manner. I’m pretty certain that it cannot. Trying to dial in “controlled” exposure and match it to some theoretical 85-90% hospital capacity is almost certainly an impossible task. Not with an infection this contagious, not with an impossible to assume and loosely random serious illness rate, not with an utterly impossible to gauge random hospital load from _other sources_ at any given moment.

The only thing I can see your proposed program doing is accelerating infection rates while sorta hoping for the best. I can’t see any likelihood that would turn out well.

ETA: Not exactly ninja’ed, but I didn’t read that last post carefully enough. But essentially what **HMS Irruncible** said.

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**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2020, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/62 "2020-04-02T15:42:24Z")

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> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#):
>
> I think you’re grasping the core of the problem now, and neither of us really has any idea how much capacity is free, where the free capacity is, the logistics of utilizing it.
> 
> More importantly we don’t know when or where peak load is coming, how intense it will be, and when relief may come in the form of vaccines. We don’t even have test kits to know if we have areas that seem OK but may be ready to tip over.
> 
> Under some scenarios, you might be right that we could “shift left” as it’s called and try to get some clients through the system early. From where I sit, it looks like most large metros are already at or near capacity, and for the rest of the country the peak of the storm is soon to hit.

Vaccines are a year to a year and half away. Hoping for that miracle is the absolute worst way to try to fight this.

This thing does flare up, but not overnight. When there were 6 cases in a state, we could have been starting on this. There would have been no chance of going from 6 cases to an overwhelmed system that fast.

I cannot wrap my head around the concept that we don’t want to use known unused hospital capacity now because there is a very, very small chance we would under estimate critical care rate, so instead we are going to just wait, knowing we will be overwhelming our hospital systems later with the very same patients would could have treated earlier when we had capacity.

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**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2020, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/63 "2020-04-02T16:50:24Z")

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> [@Ulfreida](#):
>
> 1. There can’t be any volunteers because there is no testing.
> 2. Yes, you are right, in two weeks things will be much worse.
> 3. We could have been doing a lot of things in February that would have helped greatly, but that’s over. The Stupid won February.
> 4. You are quite absolutely wrong. In two weeks things will be worse almost everywhere. Exponential growth doesn’t take long to get worse and the virus is in every state now.
> 
> There is no point in purposely infected people at all, as infection is happening much too fast to quarantine anyone.
> 
> This idea might – might – have had some merit at the beginning of February. But that window is closed and will stay closed forever. You may as well say, let’s get all the hospitals stocked with the hundreds of thousands of ventilators and all the PPE that they will need for this pandemic by February. An even better idea, eh? And yet, it is already April.

You’re right. Discussing what could have been back in February is of little use. Thanks for all the feedback and inputs.

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**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2020, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/64 "2020-04-02T19:09:05Z")

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> [@cmosdes](#):
>
> I cannot wrap my head around the concept that we don’t want to use known unused hospital capacity now because there is a very, very small chance we would under estimate critical care rate,

MHO is that you are massively overestimating our capacity to make accurate estimations.

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**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2020, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/65 "2020-04-02T23:29:56Z")

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> [@cmosdes](#):
>
> 1. We’d be looking for volunteers, not draftees.
> 2. We are better capable now of saving people who will react to this virus than we will be in 3 weeks.
> 3. We could have been doing this in early/mid February. We knew damn well back then it wouldn’t be out of hand in 3 weeks.
> 4. Things might be worse in two weeks. But there are no indications of that in most areas. NY knows it is two weeks from the peak, so don’t do it in NY. Same with a few other places.
> 5. Yes, those infected purposely might infect others. But if we infect them purposely we keep them quarantined in designated areas and control that. That would actually reduce the number of accidental transmissions.
> 6. Even if they do nothing after recovering, they are no longer vectors and accidental transmission is no longer possible. There is NO downside to having more people on the other side of this.
> 7. What will people do in 3 weeks when this thing is ripping through communities? Those that were infected earlier can help, if they want, or they can sit at home. Either way, they are no longer going to be part of the problem, which they very well might be given our present course.
> 
> You are dead on correct that the optics of this make it implausible. And you are also correct that it is too late now to try and do this. Add to that all the variables we can’t control for and this idea is dead, at least on a concerted, organized level.

Can you present some numbers as to how a “controlled infection” could possibly be done that is helpful for building herd immunity, but doesn’t overwhelm the medical system? If it is true that 20% of people who contract it will be in serious enough condition to require hospitalization, then you can “controlled-infect” 5x the number of ICU beds that you have per day. The number of [ICU beds in the entire US](http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/cbn/2020/cbnreport-02272020.html) is \<50,000, with potential to expand that to ~100,000 by repurposing other beds. So if you could magically infect 500,000 people per day, in exactly the locations where the 100,000 who need serious medical care can take the beds of those people who just recovered… to get to 50% of the American population having contracted it, it would take almost an entire year (327 days)! And this magically requires:  
-Ability to precisely control the spread of the disease (so, quarantine people who volunteer to contract it immediately until they recover)  
-Ability to immediately fill the bed of a recovered patient with a newly seriously-infected patient  
-Have the controlled-infection cases spread out across the country exactly distributed where medical treatment can support them  
-This is also assuming 100% of these ICU beds can be dedicated to covid-19 patients!

Unless you can show me otherwise, I see no way to do a “controlled infection” that meaningfully builds up herd immunity in a community quickly enough to be relevant. I don’t see how starting it early helps with anything - you can still only infect a small % of people at a time without overwhelming your medical capability. Perhaps in theory, if you could identify the people who would be “super spreaders” and infect and quarantine them early, that might help, but I don’t know how you would go about identifying these people (plus, I take it they would all have to volunteer to get infected and be quarantined?). And even that wouldn’t necessarily help if large gatherings of people are allowed. The best thing I could see on paper is that you could infect all the most critical workers (health care workers?) early on to ensure that they could get care and have the best chance of survival before hospitals get overwhelmed. This also doesn’t seem to make much sense because the people who you infect intentionally MUST be quarantined (or else they will be spreading it uncontrolled), which means that you’d be losing a significant portion of your critical workers, each for 10-14 days (or more) - again to do this in a way which doesn’t significantly affect your healthcare system’s capability would take ages.

Regarding the thread OP, the most convincing article I’ve read so far is [The Hammer and the Dance](https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56), which suggests the best approach is to do a hard lockdown to get the number of active cases down to a minimum, then slowly reintroduce measures to try to allow society to get back to as normal as possible while keeping R\<1. The hard lockdown might only need to last 3 weeks - but the “dance” will have to last until there’s a vaccine. Right now it’s not clear what level of measures is necessary to keep R\<1 - it might be possible that large gatherings will have to be banned but most other activities can resume, if there is adequate testing/quarantining/contact tracing occurring around the residual cases that exist.

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**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/66 "2020-04-03T03:14:16Z")

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> [@Delayed\_Reflex](#):
>
> Can you present some numbers as to how a “controlled infection” could possibly be done that is helpful for building herd immunity, but doesn’t overwhelm the medical system?

I’ve been trying to find ICU numbers for the various age groups, but all I can find are numbers that show the percentages of the people needing ICU care. That doesn’t help in this case because I don’t know the total infected. As I’ve said elsewhere, if you infect 10,000 people and 2 of them are over 80, then if 1 person of 80 and 1 other person end up in the ICU, 50% of the ICU patients are under 80 but only 0.01% of them needed ICU care. If you can point me to a source that indicates ICU rates by age I can try to run some numbers. You are likely right that even with a controlled exposure we can’t really get a significant number through. I still think getting some through is better than waiting, even if we can’t get to herd immunity before the wave crashes over an area. But the number might be so small as to not be worth the logistic hassles.

> [@QUOTE=Delayed Reflex](#):
>
> slowly reintroduce measures to try to allow society to get back to as normal as possible while keeping R\<1.

Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like trying to have a controlled infection?

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**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/67 "2020-04-03T03:26:43Z")

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This might help.

> **[More than 70% of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 had at least 1...](https://www.sciencealert.com/more-than-70-of-americans-hospitalised-with-covid-19-had-at-least-1-underlying-health-condition-the-cdc-says)**
>
> Diabetes, chronic lung disease, and cardiovascular disease were the most commonly reported preexisting conditions among US coronavirus patients.

The bottom line seems to be that people with an underlying condition that involves cardiovascular problems or problems that relate to CV issues are making up the vast majority of those that need hospital and ICU care. No such problems and you have a really significantly lower chance of needing care. Three times lower chance of hospitalisation, and close to tens times lower chance of ICU.  
Of course, for the USA, CV problems are endemic, as is type 2 diabetes, so the issues with Corvid-19 are not so trivial. It seems quite possible that a large part of the age related distribution is the increasing likelihood of these co-factors with age.

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**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/68 "2020-04-03T06:10:33Z")

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> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#):
>
> This might help.  
> [73% of Americans Hospitalised With COVID-19 Had an Underlying Condition, Says CDC : ScienceAlert](https://www.sciencealert.com/more-than-70-of-americans-hospitalised-with-covid-19-had-at-least-1-underlying-health-condition-the-cdc-says)  
> .

Unfortunately that doesn’t include age as a factor. According to the table in there, 2% of ICU cases had none of those risk factors. I’ll have to get better numbers, but my wild guess is that we would need fractions of a percent ICU rates to keep from overwhelming the ICU in a given area. Oregon has 4m people and just over 200 ICU beds. If the ICU rate for the exposed group were 0.1%, we could expose 200,000 people and be on the edge. That is 5% of the total population. Not bad, but not where we need to be for herd immunity. It still gets 200,000 through early, which will slow the spread when the peak arrives, but isn’t enough to stop it. And that only works if we can find a group with only a 0.1% ICU rate. Still seems plausible to me.

If you think that cuts thing too close, expose half that number. The 100 people that get into trouble early is 100 fewer people that are in trouble when the wave hits.

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**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/69 "2020-04-03T13:34:42Z")

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> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#):
>
> This might help.  
> [73% of Americans Hospitalised With COVID-19 Had an Underlying Condition, Says CDC : ScienceAlert](https://www.sciencealert.com/more-than-70-of-americans-hospitalised-with-covid-19-had-at-least-1-underlying-health-condition-the-cdc-says)
> 
> The bottom line seems to be that people with an underlying condition that involves cardiovascular problems or problems that relate to CV issues are making up the vast majority of those that need hospital and ICU care. No such problems and you have a really significantly lower chance of needing care. Three times lower chance of hospitalisation, and close to tens times lower chance of ICU.  
> Of course, for the USA, CV problems are endemic, as is type 2 diabetes, so the issues with Corvid-19 are not so trivial. It seems quite possible that a large part of the age related distribution is the increasing likelihood of these co-factors with age.

It does, thanks.

Other interesting bits:  
" Italy’s National Institute of Health found that 99 percent of people who died from COVID-19 had at least one preexisting condition"

For some reason, former smokers have a 20% chance of ICU while current smokers have 5%. Any hypothesis as to why?

Any idea whether or not the fact that a condition is being treated matters? E.g.: If someone has high blood pressure but that blood pressure is within a healthy range while taking medication, is the prognosis the same?

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**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/70 "2020-04-03T13:56:46Z")

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> [@MichaelEmouse](#):
>
> For some reason, former smokers have a 20% chance of ICU while current smokers have 5%. Any hypothesis as to why?

Yeah, I thought that was a curious one. The only thing I could think of is that these were people who hadn’t willingly given up smoking just because it was a nasty filthy habit. They were people who had been forced to give up smoking because they were seriously ill. So having given up smoking is a marker for some other bad condition.

> [@](#):
>
> Any idea whether or not the fact that a condition is being treated matters? E.g.: If someone has high blood pressure but that blood pressure is within a healthy range while taking medication, is the prognosis the same?

That really is the question isn’t it? It probably depends on a whole host of other questions, including the underling pathology of the condition. Not enough information around at the moment.

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**Author:** ![MarvinKitFox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@MarvinKitFox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarvinKitFox)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/71 "2020-04-03T14:14:15Z")

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> [@cmosdes](#):
>
> You held up Ebola as an example. I asked how that was contained. You didn’t answer. Make your case about how we can contain this in the same way Ebola or SARS or MERS was contained.

Ebola (and to a lesser extent SARS and MERS) are much more containable _ **because** _ they are more lethal.

A bug that kills its host within a week, had one week to spread. Less, if it disabled the host within 2 days from becoming contagious, as Ebola does.

Ebola was contained by preventing sick people from reaching healthy people, and by rigorous quarantine of the people exposed to it. This worked _fine_ in civilized countries. In less civilized central africa, it was contained by killing off everyone it touched, before they could reach healthy populations by foot.

Covid-19 is hard to contain, because it becomes contagious before you display obvious symptoms. Because a significant percentage of people are contagious but show _no_ symptoms. Because many cases are so mild as to appear like a common cold(which _is_ what Covid is, really. Just one with potentially nasty complications). And because even if you get a bad case, you are still mobile and contagious for a week+ before the virus disables you.

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**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/72 "2020-04-03T16:22:46Z")

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> [@MarvinKitFox](#):
>
> A bug that kills its host within a week, had one week to spread. Less, if it disabled the host within 2 days from becoming contagious, as Ebola does.

In an area as dense as the US, it would seem 2 days of being infectious is an eternity. Think of how many people you can interact within 2 days on a plane, at Disney, a concert, subway, etc. There must be something else besides just the lethality of the disease which allows it to be contained. Lethality works in rural areas, not in densely populated ones.

Ebola and Covid-19 have approximately the same R0. Lethality doesn’t explain the difference in containability, so something else is at play here.

> [@MarvinKitFox](#):
>
> Covid-19 is hard to contain, because it becomes contagious before you display obvious symptoms. Because a significant percentage of people are contagious but show _no_ symptoms. Because many cases are so mild as to appear like a common cold(which _is_ what Covid is, really. Just one with potentially nasty complications). And because even if you get a bad case, you are still mobile and contagious for a week+ before the virus disables you.

And this is where I think the big difference is. With Ebola, if someone shows ANY symptoms you contain them. With this? We can’t do that. If we knew who had the disease we could contain them and keep them from spreading it. As it is, we don’t know who has it and so we are trying to keep as many people spread apart as we can. That will work to a degree and is our best option.

But, in addition to that, if we were to introduce a controlled infection, where we are purposely taking a group of people and trying to infect them, (which is, in essence, what a vaccine does) we would keep them isolated until they had developed the disease and then recovered. People seem to have the idea that those purposely exposed would be free to wander around. Of course you wouldn’t do that.

Covid-19 cannot be contained in the same way Ebola or SARS or any of the others were.

All a moot point, though, as April is going to be an ugly, ugly month.

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**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/73 "2020-04-03T17:17:47Z")

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It ends when the people realize it’s a ploy of control through fear. It was so easy. The lock down will never end. That’s the idea. 😔

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/74 "2020-04-03T18:32:59Z")

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> [@SuntanLotion](#):
>
> It ends when the people realize it’s a ploy of control through fear. It was so easy. The lock down will never end. That’s the idea. 😔

**Moderator Note**

Keep the political comments out of this forum. We especially don’t need conspiracy theories here. Further comments of this kind in this forum will be liable for a warning.

Colibri  
Quarantine Zone Moderator

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**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/75 "2020-04-03T19:43:34Z")

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I’m 63 and have lupus, so I’m in two high-risk groups despite my careful diet and rigorous work-outs. If I understand what the majority here are saying, I will either have to continue self-isolation for the 18 months or longer before a vaccine is available or I will almost certainly get COVID-19. Is that accurate?

☹

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**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/76 "2020-04-03T20:10:36Z")

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> [@nelliebly](#):
>
> I’m 63 and have lupus, so I’m in two high-risk groups despite my careful diet and rigorous work-outs. If I understand what the majority here are saying, I will either have to continue self-isolation for the 18 months or longer before a vaccine is available or I will almost certainly get COVID-19. Is that accurate?
> 
> ☹

I’m hoping someone will correct this if I’m thinking about it wrong.

We are using social distancing to slow the rate to keep the medical system from being overrun. That means there will be a low level of the virus running around for a long time and would mean you’d need to self-isolate until a vaccine is available. Maybe eventually testing will catch up and we can isolate all carriers and have it die off that way.

Other ways this could end is if it mutates into something less deadly. Viruses tend to do that.

It could end by enough other people having been infected that it runs out of hosts, even if testing never catches up.

I don’t think there is a definite answer to any of this.

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**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/77 "2020-04-03T20:39:30Z")

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> [@nelliebly](#):
>
> I’m 63 and have lupus, so I’m in two high-risk groups despite my careful diet and rigorous work-outs. If I understand what the majority here are saying, I will either have to continue self-isolation for the 18 months or longer before a vaccine is available or I will almost certainly get COVID-19. Is that accurate?
> 
> ☹

Herd immunity could happen before 18 months.

Also, the risk really goes up around age 70: [https://www.google.com/search?q=corona+age&rlz=1C1SQJL\_enCA829CA829&sxsrf=ALeKk022ClVVJy2\_QI\_\_RjKlOvqaM2NCCQ:1585946126577&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsqofcjc3oAhVhUd8KHXhtBEEQ\_AUoAnoECBUQBA&biw=1495&bih=929#imgrc=CePRusbl1tXJaM](https://www.google.com/search?q=corona+age&rlz=1C1SQJL_enCA829CA829&sxsrf=ALeKk022ClVVJy2_QI__RjKlOvqaM2NCCQ:1585946126577&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsqofcjc3oAhVhUd8KHXhtBEEQ_AUoAnoECBUQBA&biw=1495&bih=929#imgrc=CePRusbl1tXJaM)

Keep in mind that healthcare will get better at treating COVID over time and that while some factors are aggravating, other factors (like diet and exercise) could be ameliorating. I started exercise in 2018 and haven’t sick once since then so your exercise could help you fight it too.

But yes, be extra careful.

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**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2020, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/78 "2020-04-03T20:44:50Z")

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> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#):
>
> I say this as someone who donates O-negative on a regular basis.

Zat so? I’ll give you a call if I ever leak the precious red fluid in dangerous quantities and need a refill.

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**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2020, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/79 "2020-04-04T18:12:30Z")

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> [@nelliebly](#):
>
> I’m 63 and have lupus, so I’m in two high-risk groups despite my careful diet and rigorous work-outs. If I understand what the majority here are saying, I will either have to continue self-isolation for the 18 months or longer before a vaccine is available or I will almost certainly get COVID-19. Is that accurate?
> 
> ☹

On the bright side if Chloroquine turns out to be the treatment, then you are home free.

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**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2020, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-does-it-end/850796/80 "2020-04-05T06:06:51Z")

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> [@AK84](#):
>
> On the bright side if Chloroquine turns out to be the treatment, then you are home free.

Sadly, I’m not. I was on hydroxychloroquine, but docs yanked me off it because it apparently damaged my retina. Hydroxychloroquine helps some lupus patients and not others. Many lupus patients are on immune-suppression drugs such as methotrexate, cyclosporin, or steroids and are not on hydroxychloroquine.

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