Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000 From: Vermont, USA Status: offline
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In order to determine what is worth doing, I think you have to weight the potential cost. I think the potential numbers and effects without major mitigation are well summarized here: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19/ The projections from epidemiologists are that without mitigation, 40-70% of the population will be infected. If you look at hospital beds running out within the first month of significant levels of infection, that means that the fatality rate could easily rise to between 5-10%. For a population of 330 million, the result would be that by the time this runs its course without any mitigation, millions would be dead. We're talking way more casualties than we suffered in all the wars of the 20th century. Now extend this across the world and the cost is beyond staggering, likely worse than the Spanish Flu. For me, this means that against this unseen enemy, we need at least a WWII level of effort across the world and it starts in our own countries. This is not something we can wish away and if we don't take extreme measures and change our assumptions and how we deal with the world until this war is won, we will be the ones on the losing side. I think there is cause for hope given that we have seen free societies able to slow the spread, but we have been thinking half-measures would suffice and life could continue mostly as before and now have a lot of catching up to do. Until we do catch up (if we have the political and civil will at all levels of government and the citizenry) it will get very bad. This will not really stop until we have a vaccine and we don't even know for sure that a vaccine is possible at this point, we just hope it is. There has never been a successful coronavirus vaccine and these types of viruses mutate very quickly, so it may be a moving target. This argues even more for very strong mitigation and massive efforts to find good therapies. Every country around the world will become a hotspot in the meantime, capable of spreading cases further. I think there is still time to avoid the absolute worst outcome, but it's still going to get very bad and at this point I'd guess it will be years before outbreaks stop popping up in various places around the world given the time it will take for mass vaccinations to spread to even the poorest countries. I sincerely hope I'm wrong about all this and it turns out that we can get control of this in a month or two without that level of effort, but so far I've been feeling a lot like Cassandra which is not comforting. Regards, - Erik
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