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This article goes horribly wrong very quickly: > They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns as we are currently observing them in Chin

This article goes horribly wrong very quickly: > They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns as we are currently observing them in China and Italy. No, they don't. They mean to tell you that we need to slow the spread of the infection as much as possible, by whatever means we can sustain. That includes the potential of lockdowns. We individuals can only do so much. What we must do is wash our hands, practise social distancing, wash our hands, interact with as few people as possible, wash our hands, and only go out if essential. This graphic is telling people why they have to do this, it's not saying that to do so is enough to avoid lockdowns. Much of the rest of the article is right, but that part is seriously wrong. It concludes with: > Flattening the curve is not an option for the United States, for the UK or Germany. Don’t tell your friends to flatten the curve. Let’s start containment. That's just bizarre. Containment is part of flattening the curve, and the other measures that we personally can implement is also part of flattening the curve. Everything we do to slow and hinder the spread will help. Total containment is not possible, all we can do is slow the spread, and that is flattening the curve! So wash your hands, go out as little as possible, interact with as few people as possible, and do your bit to help flatten the curve.

etrabroline 7y ago
https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*FoIElQyKudIShpnBHckC5A.png https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*FoIElQyKudIShpnBHckC5A.pn... Would you like to refute or respond to this plot? > Containment is part of flattening the curve But "flattening the curve" means allowing exponential growth and waiting for most people to become infected. That would be a catastrophe, so no, containment is not a part of flattening the curve, and FTC is a wholly inadequate goal.
- ColinWright 7y ago
  > Would you like to refute or respond to this plot? "Flattening the Curve" is not and cannot be the entire story. It's a process to reduce the stress on the health services, but what seems clear from all the numbers is that the health services will be overwhelmed, we're just trying to reduce the number of concomitant deaths. > But "flattening the curve" means allowing exponential growth ... The cumulative number of cases will, barring exceptional intervention, be a logistic function, and the number of cases "in progress" will more-or-less be the derivative. And for a logistic function the first part is more-or-less an exponential. So whether you "Flatten the Curve" or not, the first phase is always effectively exponential, and since containment is now effectively impossible, it's inevitable that most people (they're suggesting 80%) of people will eventually have been infected. The way to reduce the catastrophe is to make the rate of infection as low as possible, thus stretching the logistic function and thereby reducing the maximum of the derivative. That's my understanding.
  - etrabroline 7y ago
    The health services will be overwhelmed if all we do is tell people to wash their hands. You are content with ~1,000,000 dead Americans, I am not.
    - ColinWright 7y ago
      There's something here you're really not understanding, and I don't know if it's because you're not reading carefully enough, or I'm not being clear enough. I'm not saying that all we do is tell people to wash their hands. Flattening the Curve is not just telling people to wash their hands. It's also saying self-isolate, where possible don't travel, where possible don't go out at all, when it's necessary to go out, stay a minimum of 2 metres away from people whenever you can. Flattening the Curve is not about "Just wash your hands and we'll be fine", it's about making as many contributions in as many ways as possible to slowing the rate of infection. I'm genuinely astonished if you think "Flatten the Curve" just means "Wash your hands". And when I run the numbers, it looks to me like the US health services are going to be overwhelmed regardless, the point is to do every little thing possible to reduce the amount. That's what Flattening the Curve means.
      - saurik 7y ago
        And the article, which is maybe the thing you aren't understanding ;P, is saying that merely reducing the speed by social distancing--which most people, maybe not you but then that is your misunderstanding of the background concept being talked about being here, think is going to be sufficient to not overwhelm hospitals, and that life will be able to return to normal soon--is not going to be sufficient to get the peak of that curve under that line... which again, is what the vast majority of people talking about "flattening the curve" are meaning: if this data were correct (which is not your argument, so let's assume it is) and you showed them the chart of the curve being flattened requiring a decade for the cute little infographic to work, I think the vast majority of people sharing those graphs would have a dawning realization that something even more drastic than mere social distancing is required, such as active tracing and containment, which no one in the US even seems to be contemplating attempting (source: I am a local government official who gets to peek behind the curtains a bit of the regional government above me, and I am absolutely horrified). You really just seem to have an awkward model of what people clearly are thinking when they say "flatten the curve" and share those little graphs, and are using it to cause a massive equivocation battle to undermine the thesis of an article that is effectively saying "we need to be allocating some effort towards active measures and not assume passive ones will be 100% sufficient"; trying to assert this article is telling people not to self isolate is such an on purpose misread it is painful :/. (Now, are the numbers in this article correct? Dunno. Or is it just too late to bother and we are all doomed? Dunno. But again: not your arguments.)
- rumanator 7y ago
  > But "flattening the curve" means allowing exponential growth and waiting for most people to become infected. I really have no idea where and how you've created that definition, because it has absolutely no relation to the real meaning of flattening the curve and even completely ignores the problem. Just to be clear, flattening the curve refers to limit the spread of the epidemic so that the amount of new cases are not an exponential spike but a smooth curve throughout time. Thus, the curve is flattened. That's it. How do you do that? Well, by containing how the disease spreads by enforcing containment and self-isolate and avoid contact with everyone. Washing your hands is great and makes up for a good scapegoat, but the reason why people are being sent to work from home, stock up on supplies, and not sey foot outside unless they really need to, is to contain how the disease spreads.

etrabroline 7y ago

https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*FoIElQyKudIShpnBHckC5A.png https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*FoIElQyKudIShpnBHckC5A.pn... Would you like to refute or respond to this plot? > Containment is part of flattening the curve But "flattening the curve" means allowing exponential growth and waiting for most people to become infected. That would be a catastrophe, so no, containment is not a part of flattening the curve, and FTC is a wholly inadequate goal.

ColinWright 7y ago
> Would you like to refute or respond to this plot? "Flattening the Curve" is not and cannot be the entire story. It's a process to reduce the stress on the health services, but what seems clear from all the numbers is that the health services will be overwhelmed, we're just trying to reduce the number of concomitant deaths. > But "flattening the curve" means allowing exponential growth ... The cumulative number of cases will, barring exceptional intervention, be a logistic function, and the number of cases "in progress" will more-or-less be the derivative. And for a logistic function the first part is more-or-less an exponential. So whether you "Flatten the Curve" or not, the first phase is always effectively exponential, and since containment is now effectively impossible, it's inevitable that most people (they're suggesting 80%) of people will eventually have been infected. The way to reduce the catastrophe is to make the rate of infection as low as possible, thus stretching the logistic function and thereby reducing the maximum of the derivative. That's my understanding.
- etrabroline 7y ago
  The health services will be overwhelmed if all we do is tell people to wash their hands. You are content with ~1,000,000 dead Americans, I am not.
  - ColinWright 7y ago
    There's something here you're really not understanding, and I don't know if it's because you're not reading carefully enough, or I'm not being clear enough. I'm not saying that all we do is tell people to wash their hands. Flattening the Curve is not just telling people to wash their hands. It's also saying self-isolate, where possible don't travel, where possible don't go out at all, when it's necessary to go out, stay a minimum of 2 metres away from people whenever you can. Flattening the Curve is not about "Just wash your hands and we'll be fine", it's about making as many contributions in as many ways as possible to slowing the rate of infection. I'm genuinely astonished if you think "Flatten the Curve" just means "Wash your hands". And when I run the numbers, it looks to me like the US health services are going to be overwhelmed regardless, the point is to do every little thing possible to reduce the amount. That's what Flattening the Curve means.
    - saurik 7y ago
      And the article, which is maybe the thing you aren't understanding ;P, is saying that merely reducing the speed by social distancing--which most people, maybe not you but then that is your misunderstanding of the background concept being talked about being here, think is going to be sufficient to not overwhelm hospitals, and that life will be able to return to normal soon--is not going to be sufficient to get the peak of that curve under that line... which again, is what the vast majority of people talking about "flattening the curve" are meaning: if this data were correct (which is not your argument, so let's assume it is) and you showed them the chart of the curve being flattened requiring a decade for the cute little infographic to work, I think the vast majority of people sharing those graphs would have a dawning realization that something even more drastic than mere social distancing is required, such as active tracing and containment, which no one in the US even seems to be contemplating attempting (source: I am a local government official who gets to peek behind the curtains a bit of the regional government above me, and I am absolutely horrified). You really just seem to have an awkward model of what people clearly are thinking when they say "flatten the curve" and share those little graphs, and are using it to cause a massive equivocation battle to undermine the thesis of an article that is effectively saying "we need to be allocating some effort towards active measures and not assume passive ones will be 100% sufficient"; trying to assert this article is telling people not to self isolate is such an on purpose misread it is painful :/. (Now, are the numbers in this article correct? Dunno. Or is it just too late to bother and we are all doomed? Dunno. But again: not your arguments.)
rumanator 7y ago
> But "flattening the curve" means allowing exponential growth and waiting for most people to become infected. I really have no idea where and how you've created that definition, because it has absolutely no relation to the real meaning of flattening the curve and even completely ignores the problem. Just to be clear, flattening the curve refers to limit the spread of the epidemic so that the amount of new cases are not an exponential spike but a smooth curve throughout time. Thus, the curve is flattened. That's it. How do you do that? Well, by containing how the disease spreads by enforcing containment and self-isolate and avoid contact with everyone. Washing your hands is great and makes up for a good scapegoat, but the reason why people are being sent to work from home, stock up on supplies, and not sey foot outside unless they really need to, is to contain how the disease spreads.