4 ms·

Extreme measures are likely doing more harm than good -- as soon as China loosens them, there will be a flood of cases. You can't eradicate a disease that sprea

Extreme measures are likely doing more harm than good -- as soon as China loosens them, there will be a flood of cases. You can't eradicate a disease that spreads via the air we breath (and can spread to animals). You can slow it, but much like Influenza you're stuck with it forever now. With that in mind, the larger impact is going to be the lack of medicine, food, etc. that comes from a large-scale heavy response. We are just at the beginning. Push for social distancing, but over the next two years we're just going to have to learn to deal with this. It'll mutate, we'll find ways to mitigate damage and we'll have a large loss of life. Push out higher production of medical equipment and push out the best possible safety gear for healthcare workers. On a personal level, try to stay fit, get lots of rest, and try to quickly take care of any other conditions. Stay home if you are sick (to avoid spreading any illness). That's about the extent we can do. Closing schools, closing offices, shutting down the economy is going to be far more damaging than this disease will be.

ezioamf 7y ago
Extreme measures is to slow down the first wave of cases so the number of patients needing medical attention is under the local capacity. Death rate is between 0.6% to 8% depending on how you can treat the patients and that requires that you have enough capacity to handle it. Over time we will have better medicines to reduce the need of ICUs and vaccines and then containment will not be necessary but we will continue to handle it as a seasonal disease.
- paulmd 7y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21149215 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21149215 There are approximately 20 full-service ventilators per 100k population in the united states. Let's say 1% of cases require hospitalization and ventilation. That means we can sustain a sick population of 200 per 100k, or 0.2% at any given time. You underestimate just how unprepared we are for this situation. It is not possible to "bend the curve" enough to keep everyone safe (infected below 2% of the population). Full stop, that little chart from bendthecurve.com with the nice flat blue curve that goes under "medical system capacity" will not happen. That's fantasy. By all means we should do everything we can, the more we can slow the disease the fewer people will die, but the happy fantasy scenarios about everybody washes their hands and doesn't go to the sportsball game and we bend the curve enough that our medical system's capacity will be sufficient is just a fantasy. Further, the lower we reduce the reproduction rate, the longer this crisis will last. This is a crass observation, but if you let it burn through the population it'll be done in a few months. If you really "bend that curve" and substantially decrease reproduction rate, then it'll take correspondingly longer to exhaust its susceptible population. That means sustaining quarantine measures for a longer period of time. Researchers point to Coronavirus peaking around June or July. That means it will remain a serious problem through at least August or September ("peak" doesn't mean it's done, it just means it's slowing down). Interventions will extend that further. We need to consider the possibility that quarantine will be required for an extended period. How will this work if we need to turn our economy off for 6 months? Nine months? A year? Grandparent is probably correct that if China loosens its quarantine measures that it's going to bounce back. And in fact that is a problem that everyone has to consider. https://www.ketv.com/article/unmc-models-suggest-covid-19-cases-in-us-may-peak-between-april-and-june-coronavirus-virus/31339926 https://www.ketv.com/article/unmc-models-suggest-covid-19-ca... https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-03/coronavirus-government-works-to-make-sure-any-covid-19-epidemic-is-delayed-to-summer-writes-robert-peston/ https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-03/coronavirus-government-w... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022566v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022566v...
  - ezioamf 7y ago
    I did not said that we are prepared for it. What I was saying that we need extreme measures to slow down the number of cases and not that we will have full success at doing it but we can save a lot of lives and this the only thing that really matters.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
>Extreme measures are likely doing more harm than good You lost me here. I hope we never do them in the USA, but the extreme measures taken by China absolutely halted the spread of the disease.
- fspeech 7y ago
  And now they can export medical supply to the rest of the world. Just imagine if they had not been able to halt the spread.
- undefinedblog 7y ago
  me getting lost too, op suggests China should just let loose?

ezioamf 7y ago

Extreme measures is to slow down the first wave of cases so the number of patients needing medical attention is under the local capacity. Death rate is between 0.6% to 8% depending on how you can treat the patients and that requires that you have enough capacity to handle it. Over time we will have better medicines to reduce the need of ICUs and vaccines and then containment will not be necessary but we will continue to handle it as a seasonal disease.

paulmd 7y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21149215 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21149215 There are approximately 20 full-service ventilators per 100k population in the united states. Let's say 1% of cases require hospitalization and ventilation. That means we can sustain a sick population of 200 per 100k, or 0.2% at any given time. You underestimate just how unprepared we are for this situation. It is not possible to "bend the curve" enough to keep everyone safe (infected below 2% of the population). Full stop, that little chart from bendthecurve.com with the nice flat blue curve that goes under "medical system capacity" will not happen. That's fantasy. By all means we should do everything we can, the more we can slow the disease the fewer people will die, but the happy fantasy scenarios about everybody washes their hands and doesn't go to the sportsball game and we bend the curve enough that our medical system's capacity will be sufficient is just a fantasy. Further, the lower we reduce the reproduction rate, the longer this crisis will last. This is a crass observation, but if you let it burn through the population it'll be done in a few months. If you really "bend that curve" and substantially decrease reproduction rate, then it'll take correspondingly longer to exhaust its susceptible population. That means sustaining quarantine measures for a longer period of time. Researchers point to Coronavirus peaking around June or July. That means it will remain a serious problem through at least August or September ("peak" doesn't mean it's done, it just means it's slowing down). Interventions will extend that further. We need to consider the possibility that quarantine will be required for an extended period. How will this work if we need to turn our economy off for 6 months? Nine months? A year? Grandparent is probably correct that if China loosens its quarantine measures that it's going to bounce back. And in fact that is a problem that everyone has to consider. https://www.ketv.com/article/unmc-models-suggest-covid-19-cases-in-us-may-peak-between-april-and-june-coronavirus-virus/31339926 https://www.ketv.com/article/unmc-models-suggest-covid-19-ca... https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-03/coronavirus-government-works-to-make-sure-any-covid-19-epidemic-is-delayed-to-summer-writes-robert-peston/ https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-03/coronavirus-government-w... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022566v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022566v...
- ezioamf 7y ago
  I did not said that we are prepared for it. What I was saying that we need extreme measures to slow down the number of cases and not that we will have full success at doing it but we can save a lot of lives and this the only thing that really matters.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

>Extreme measures are likely doing more harm than good You lost me here. I hope we never do them in the USA, but the extreme measures taken by China absolutely halted the spread of the disease.

fspeech 7y ago
And now they can export medical supply to the rest of the world. Just imagine if they had not been able to halt the spread.
undefinedblog 7y ago
me getting lost too, op suggests China should just let loose?