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Americans are underestimating how long disruptions will last, health experts say

• dbish 7y ago
  What do others think the right timeline to plan for is, and is there anything different people should be doing if it's going to be another 6 months or longer? Personally, I'm assuming this will last until at least September. Better to be pleasantly surprised if it's earlier.
  • standardUser 7y ago
    It's unlikely most Americans will tolerate a 5-6 month lockdown. Eventually quarantine violations will hit a tipping point and the transmission rate will jump, likely overwhelming our healthcare system.
    • CPLX 7y ago
      > It's unlikely most Americans will tolerate a 5-6 month lockdown. It's not really a matter of tolerating, they'll literally start starving to death at a certain point. A couple months is enough time for credit cards to be cancelled for lack of payments or all limits to be hit, enough time for these various stimulus plans to run out, etc. Enough time for all but the most well capitalized businesses to just fail. A massive percentage of the country just can't survive that long. There's more ways to die than just COVID.
  • LandR 7y ago
    In the UK I'm expecting restrictions and lockdowns till around October ish.
  • kd5bjo 7y ago
    > Is there anything different people should be doing if it's going to be another 6 months or longer? With the sort of open-ended timeline we’re talking about, it’s important to take as broad a look as you can at the things you’ve had to cut out, what need they were filling for you, and what substitute activities can cover those needs. Most people instinctively understand this for things like food, shelter, and income, but the needs higher up Maslow’s hierarchy also need to be considered. That’s things like stress reduction, emotional support, physical activity, intellectual stimulation, comraderie, creativity, escapism, etc.
  • blihp 7y ago
    I'm planning on stay at home lasting (here in the U.S.) until sometime between early June and late-July. I think once it is lifted (probably in stages) we'll have all sorts of restrictions on larger gatherings throughout at least the end of the year. That's not to say that it will be over by then, just that the rate of cases will be manageable and hospitals will have the resources they need to handle them. As for what to do to plan for it, I'm mainly just keeping a good supply of easy to prepare food on hand with a long shelf life. Other than that, I'm not sure what can be done that doesn't start to venture into tinfoil hat territory.
  • intopieces 7y ago
    The timeline to plan for is vaccine + 6 months; best estimate for a vaccine is Spring 2021. If I see the inside of a movie theater in Summer 2021 I will be pleasantly surprised. Buy two of whatever you get 1 of every time you go to the grocery store, which should be no more than once per week.
  • Rapzid 7y ago
    We've only got a few months in the tank economically and flattening the curve alone will keep us on lock-down for years. They aren't talking too much about it but the plan is almost certainly to buy time to transition to a new strategy. The keys to this IMO will be squashing new cases, those 15 minute tests(billions of them), a health enforcement agency of some sort to conduct tracing and targeted quarantines, and increasing the capacity of the health system. The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level.
    • intopieces 7y ago
      >The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level. I hope when all is said and done, people take their state governments more seriously. The federal government is just not equipped to handle this kind of issue. I've been impressed with California's level of response.
• phnofive 7y ago
  The effectiveness of the propaganda has been astounding - of course they are underestimating it, they were convinced that masks didn’t work to avoid wasting them, just as they were convinced that a 15 day window would flatten the curve.
  • lostcolony 7y ago
    Who is 'they'? And, no one thought masks didn't work; the guidance was "don't buy the masks that work because health professionals need them, and you can achieve the desired effect by keeping distance". Now there is some thought that maybe, MAYBE the virus can stay airborne longer than thought (no proof of that; we have yet to see any infectious agent actually do that, even in a lab), and that maybe, MAYBE a non-medical mask can help a bit if that's the case, so sure, why the hell not, wear a mask, but not a medical grade one, please, we need those for our doctors and nurses.
    • ravenstine 7y ago
      I would assume that "they" is referring to Americans, given that they are the subject of the article.
    • new2628 7y ago
      There were actually several high profile experts around the world (WHO, US Surgeon General, most European authorities, even children's programmes) that said without any qualification: "Don't wear a mask, there is no need to wear mask if you are not sick, in fact it may even be harmful and may create a false sense of safety.". This was a harmful and factually false message that caused and will cause unnecessarily deaths and those who propagated it should be held accountable. see e.g. https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1244744427735781377 https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12447444277357813...
      • lostcolony 7y ago
        Even that statement you know was qualified, since I'm assuming you aren't implying it was to practicing medical personnel. "There is no need" - there still isn't. There are zero instances, even in a lab, where we've seen the virus aerosolize. If you keep your distance, all indications are you should be fine. The only thing that has changed (and remember, this is advice based on facts, and so as new facts are uncovered, the advice can change too; that's called "science", and is different than "propaganda", which is what I was directly responding to) is that we have seen some cases we can't explain...and so the guidance has become "just in case, sure, why not...just please not the medical ones because we need those for people who have to get within 6 feet of sick people".
• EarthIsHome 7y ago
  It doesn't help that many of our leaders have tried to sweep the potential impacts of this under the rug. We're constantly lied to. It's not the fault of the people in America. It's the fault of those in charge.
  • lostcolony 7y ago
    It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office.
    • Ididntdothis 7y ago
      It’s not like the system is giving them much choice.
      • staplers 7y ago
        The system has choices, it's that people are herd animals and will outcast and ridicule anyone who doesn't fall into "a side".
    • kauffj 7y ago
      Go one level deeper: it's an inevitable outcome of combining democracy and normally distributed human ability
      • twomoretime 7y ago
        This, so much. The root of all of these issues is a drastic overestimation of the average persons cognitive ability. To use IQ as a proxy, the mean (100) is shockingly incompetent and to paraphrase a famous comedian, half of us are below that average. There was a time when merit tended to bubble up into positions of authority but that has been increasingly untrue for decades, for a host of reasons that all point to a rotting western culture.
        • majormajor 7y ago
• wtvanhest 7y ago
  It is just as likely that health experts are overestimating how long Americans can stop the economy. This happened so fast that most people really could not even wrap their head around the changes. I would love for us to keep working from home, reduce travel, and get this thing under control, but at least up until now, I have a salary, and am not being adversely impacted. The number of Americans being adversely impacted is in excess of 10 million today, likely closer to 20 million, and pretty soon almost everyone is going to share some level of pain. This is going to be a very tumultuous 2 years.
• hprotagonist 7y ago
  I expect/aspire/hope to get to about 80% normal by October or so. At this point I hope to but do not expect to be able to make my normal Christmastime holiday travel, and that's about my horizon.
  • alleyshack 7y ago
    What do you think 80% normal will look like? I'm currently planning a small (30-50 people) event in October and I'm trying to figure out if I need to postpone/reschedule.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • adrianN 7y ago
      It's probably not a good idea to hold such events before a vaccine or an effective treatment are available. Neither is likely in the next 12 months.
    • blihp 7y ago
      I'd just assume it needs to be rescheduled into 2021. Should group gatherings resume before the end of the year, which seems unlikely, it seems a safe bet that turnout would be rather low just due to people not wanting to risk it. On top of that, we're most likely going to be neck-deep in a pretty painful recession (at least) by then.
  • apocalyptic0n3 7y ago
    I was actually wondering about Christmas yesterday. I moved across the country a decade ago and go home for two weeks at Christmas each year. Assuming there is no vaccine by then (which seems to be the most likely case), I was wondering what was worse: 2 4+ hour flights and the airport time or taking the 3 days and 2 hotel stays to drive (or even sleeping in my car at a rest stop if that is even allowed). And that's all assuming there aren't travel restrictions in place in 8 months.
  • nradov 7y ago
• treis 7y ago
  I think health experts are over estimating how long Americans are willing to have their lives disrupted.
  • ls612 7y ago
    I think whether or not they are willing is not a major concern in these governors’ minds. They have all activated the national guard for a reason...
    • onetimemanytime 7y ago
      The state cannot hold back the majority with the army
      • retrac 7y ago
        So far, there's strong public support up here in Canada for the measures. According to polls, the great majority believe breaking the public health orders should be a crime, at least in serious cases. There may be period of time where the government still has a strong, popular mandate to enforce distancing, but there is increasing non-compliance and resistance. Just the folks who start to snap mentally over the next weeks and months will be a serious and growing problem, even if everyone who stays mostly-rational wants to continue to maintain distancing.
        • ls612 7y ago
          I’m sure for now people are willing to go along (also who would tell a pollster they want people to die, but that’s a separate point). If this goes on for months expect public opinion to change.
          • retrac 7y ago
            That's kind of my point. The public opinion may change, but until it mounts to a point that government policy changes, they'll probably keep enforcing the distancing measures with increasing heavy-handedness. It may also become increasingly polarized with strong "I don't want to die!" and "I just want to talk to someone!" factions becoming increasingly set in their beliefs. Civil unrest could occur at that point.
• donatj 7y ago
  I've been telling my wife and friends I expect this to last well over a year. I've been told I "sound like an idiot" and that my negativity isn't helping. We'll see.
  • zabana 7y ago
    Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease after a 60day lockdown so it shouldn't take more than that. Unless of course there's an agenda we're not aware of.
    • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      > Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease in 60days so it shouldn't take more than that. Though they did seem to delay action, when they took it they went hard. Some of the US is past the point that China threw the brakes on, and the rest of the country continues to accelerate. We can't expect the timeline to align in any way.
    • leeoniya 7y ago
      did they contain the disease or the information?
      • jlmorton 7y ago
        The disease, obviously. When the disease was running rampant through Hubei, there were innumerable reports of it on social media. The WHO has had a large team of disease experts, public health experts and others in China since late January, and they say China has been totally transparent. The unfortunate truth is that authoritarian regimes are better suited to dealing with a pandemic, particularly competent, technocratic regimes like China's.
        • BatFastard 7y ago
          They were well suited AFTER the two months of trying to bury it. Once the cat got out of the bag, when keeping it in the bag was the whole point.
• mc32 7y ago
  Locales that had the pandemic under control are seeing new flare-ups. So either we lock down till a drug treatment is authorized (there are promising candidates), a vaccine is found or we accept that it’s unstoppable short of the above and we go about knowing the risks but while minimizing the known risks.
• bpodgursky 7y ago
  The problem is that public health officials are completely misusing terminology and sending contradictory messages, and it is 100% not the fault of Americans misunderstanding it (this is from the same article!): > Public health experts have said the near-term goal is to flatten the epidemic curve of new cases vs > “We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down with a hammer and get to near zero cases. Getting near zero cases is not flattening the curve -- that's suppression! Flattening the curve is an assumption that everyone will eventually get the disease, and trying to not overload the health system. THAT is what Americans have gotten onboard for, and what a 2-4 week lockdown would set us up to do (give us time to expand hospital capacity, etc) But if on the other hand, past the propaganda, the public health plan is ACTUALLY to eliminate the disease entirely, that's a completely different plan, and it will take months or years. It's not the fault of Americans for not understanding the implications, when they are being actively lied to about what the plan IS.
  • alexandercrohde 7y ago
    Yeah. The more I learn, the more confident I am that nobody has a real plan, and it's just a fiesta of acronyms and agencies who are only pseudo-educated (e.g. couldn't recite essential statistics about mortality rate once one a ventilator off the top of their head) on the topic. It's hard to say though, how much of it is raw political ignorance versus hiding bad news.
    • ardy42 7y ago
      > Yeah. The more I learn, the more confident I am that nobody has a real plan, and it's just a fiesta of acronyms and agencies who are only pseudo-educated I disagree. No one at the top has a real plan (probably including the political appointees at the agencies), but I'm pretty sure those agencies could put together a better one with leadership that would let them do it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/jared-kushner-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/jared-kushner-cor...
    • 7y ago
• ve55 7y ago
  Part of this is due to many institutions, companies, governments, etc, just closing 'for the next month or so'. Then after a few weeks, they extend it another month, and so on. It seems like many expect the pandemic to just magically disappear when you do a very low-effort quarantine and sit back and relax for a bit. Remember, this entire pandemic started from one person being infected. As long as there exists one person with this virus, it can start back up and easily scale to millions of cases all over again. Victory is not easy, and some of the main reasons we are doing quarantine are to learn a lot more about treatments, cures, how to cope with these changes to our supply chain, and many other things; that is, to buy us time. The levels of quarantine most countries are doing obviously slow the spread down, but are not sufficient enough to completely stop it. This is a long-term event and will be with us for a long time.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• chrismeller 7y ago
  I think the real question here is whether or not the disruption will continue? If things continue as they are for months, there’s simply going to be a change in mindset and we’re going to realize that there is a new “normal”. Full protective gear for a normal workday could easily become the norm. Maybe they underestimate how long “this” will continue, because they expect “this” will drastically change normal life.
  • glitcher 7y ago
    Wow, just imagining how much more waste we would generate if all of human population needed PPE every time we left our homes as the new normal.
    • chrismeller 7y ago
      Ironically, that could also be a huge boost to some real recycling programs, and not just with protective gear. Once people are focused on recycling something they use every single day and there are easy mechanisms to do that, recycling other things becomes less of an issue.
• known 7y ago
  Americans will prevail due to their uncanny ability to adapt to adverse/diverse conditions
  • cultus 7y ago
    What makes Americans in particular so much more special than other humans? This kind of American exceptionalism is ridiculous and should have been put to bed decades ago.
• devit 7y ago
  If done properly (i.e. everyone except law enforcement, medical, utility and delivery workers stays home, with military/police enforcement, then everyone who did not stay home is tested multiple times) eradication is possible in a month. Unfortunately we found out that almost the whole world, with some possible exceptions, has leadership that is either incompetent or has other incentives, so we will probably have to wait for a vaccine for a full return to normal life.
  • tathougies 7y ago
    > Unfortunately we found out that almost the whole world, with some possible exceptions, has leadership that is either incompetent or has other incentives, so we will probably have to wait for a vaccine for a full return to normal life. 'Normal life' includes hundreds of thousands people dying of infectious disease each year that nobody notices. I give it about 4 more weeks before we return to the normal way of acting and about 4 months until this is no longer a major news story so we can all forget about those who have died. Not saying it's right, just my observations on how people behave.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • Hokusai 7y ago
      > 'Normal life' includes hundreds of thousands people dying of infectious disease each year that nobody notices. I really think that people notices when a loved one dies, whatever the cause. What makes you think that normal people just shrugs off the death of a loved one? I am old enough to remember how many people used to die in traffic accidents and how much money, effort, and regulations where put in place to lower that numbers. I am happily impressed by how much people, from doctors to retail clerks, are doing their part and how governments have moved the economy to support that in need. Your divisive message is out of place and does not help.
      • tathougies 7y ago
        > I really think that people notices when a loved one dies, whatever the cause. Oh I agree, but hundreds of thousands die from infectious disease every year, and while their family mourns (and ought to of course), life goes on. > Your divisive message is out of place and does not help. I simply said what I thought would happen, not what I think is right. > I am happily impressed by how much people, from doctors to retail clerks, are doing their part and how governments have moved the economy to support that in need. All governments worldwide have actually and intentionally neglected to help people suffering from depression, mental health, and suicidal thoughts, which are almost certainly also going to lead to more deaths quite soon. I give it a few weeks before suicide numbers come out and indicate these lockdowns as a direct cause. Again, I'm indifferent to whether or not these sanctions are warranted, but I'm just pointing out what I think will happen.
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Can you blame them? This is the US, we have no safety net for non-corporate persons. If people don't convince themselves the disruption will end sooner than later then they may as well start looting because we're going to die starving and cold in the streets.
• ck2 7y ago
  Once there is a cheap and high reliability antibody test widely available, there are going to become two classes. Those who move freely about and do what they want, and those that live in fear of the others because they can still get infected and don't know who is who. Imagine a dystopian near future where you have to carry a government approved ID showing your immunities to get into establishments or to even move about the country.
  • thdespou 7y ago
    Nope. We will just w8 for any vaccine and hopefully this would be over.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    This is the world I'm already living in. I got coronavirus in mid-March and have since recovered from it. Now I'm walking about with impunity. I still try to maintain social distancing to keep others at ease, but I'm not worried when people violate it. If only there were restaurants for me to go to ... (And yes, I'm eagerly awaiting the blood antibody test because I want to know for sure; my symptoms were pretty textbook coronavirus, but not serious to warrant hospitalization, and hence no test was available for me.)
    • ck2 7y ago
      mid-March? Be aware that while some studies say you still virus-shed for two weeks after, some say as long as five weeks it can still be detected. Just because your fever broke doesn't mean the virus is gone, just means your body is fighting it and "winning".
      • CydeWeys 7y ago
        I strictly self-quarantined for the recommended 14 days, plus 3 days following the end of symptoms. I doubt many people are going to be down for the ~7 weeks of strict quarantine you're suggesting.
  • steveeq1 7y ago
• fermienrico 7y ago
  At this point if a non-essential persons of the society get Coronavirus, it is to blame them for not social distancing and being at large despite of well informed advice from now on. If we have a person of age 70 showing up today, they must have contracted the virus 7 days ago - What the fuck were they doing 7 days ago? I feel bad for thinking this way but nature doesn't give a shit about human emotions and our compassion. Let's face a hard fact - if you are over 60, you should be staying at home. Period. If you need medications, groceries, etc. order them online and get them delivered. Ask family members. Don't stroll into Costco thinking you'll be fine. Non-essential people who get coronavirus are doing a disservice to essential people of the society by not following social distancing guidelines. We have gotten to the point where every citizen of US know about this virus. There is no excuse. You're taking away hospital capacity from people who have no choice to social distancing - healthcare workers themselves, grocery and delivery people, police and many other jobs that are crucial to keep this society up and running. Am I wrong to think like this? Why?
  • nradov 7y ago
    You're partially wrong to think that way. There are many low income people who have no practical way to order essential supplies online. They have no choice but to go out to stores.
    • fermienrico 7y ago
      You're right. So, we can summarize: * Essential workers - high priority * Non-essential older people - Should stay in home <- I bet these are the largest group of people that show up at hospitals. People who ignore guidelines despite of being well-off and can afford to stock up. * Non-essential older people (low income) - Government should do something to provide them with assistance.
  • slg 7y ago
    I am someone who is young, relatively healthy, upper middle class, and a non-essential worker (I would guess this describes a majority of HN readers). I am doing everything I can to reduce my risk by following the various guidelines out there. However, it feels distasteful for me to outsource my risk of infection and force poorer people to become essential workers on my behalf and bring my needs to my door. I will go out and do my necessary errands myself and take that risk on my shoulders. Also your timeline is a little off on those 7 days. There can be a longer gap from exposure to symptoms plus there is also a gap of a few days from first symptoms to needing medical attention which is when we usually find out about the case.
• slg 7y ago
  I am reminded of the factoid about how airlines will often announce a extended delay by first announcing a shorter delay and then continuing to push it back several times. That is supposedly done to increase moral. Apparently several smaller disappointments are easier for people to process, accept, and forgive rather than one large disappointment. I wonder if this is the government's approach, because no one looking at the facts of the situation could have believed resuming things by Easter or anytime in the next few weeks was likely.
• 013a 7y ago
  I think there's a shard of truth in the assertion that: if you ask an epidemiologist how long people should remain locked in their homes, they'd tell you "forever". If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open today". Neither of these answers are realistic solutions to this problem. Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately, false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life. At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless. They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal. There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its course without as many economically disruptive mitigations? Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are useful. Its constantly evolving.
  • vfc1 7y ago
    The economic restrictions can be lifted in a just couple of months since the curve is under control, but people will have to go to work wearing face masks while the pandemic runs its course through 2021.
    • 013a 7y ago
      I think, and hope, that this is the best case solution, and its what we pursue. As long as people take the core of the "social distancing" measures to heart, and practice them every day, we can control the spread without Stay-at-Home. Wash hands. Sanitize high-touch surfaces every few minutes. Wear a mask, maybe even gloves. If you feel sick, stay home. If we are diligent, we can "have our cake and eat it too". But we have to be diligent.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    > If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open today". The economists are flat-out NOT saying this, because they understand that the long-term negative economic impact of an unchecked pandemic will be worse than one which is at least partially controlled.
• CydeWeys 7y ago
  Many Americans are underestimating how disruptive a mass uncontrolled pandemic is going to be to their lives. If hospitals are completely overflowing and most people who get serious symptoms die for lack of available treatment capacity, and everyone knows friends and family members who've already died form it, do you think life isn't going to be massively disrupted anyway? People will hunker down and go nowhere out of a sheer sense of self-preservation, without the government needing to tell them to. The pandemic itself is what's causing all the disruption and economic hardship. The social distancing measures are NOT the cause -- in the absence of them we'd be doing even worse off in the long run.
  • umanwizard 7y ago
    I already have friends and family members who have died of various causes. We haven't destroyed civilization over it.
    • CydeWeys 7y ago
      How many of those friends and family members died of causes that could be prevented through temporary social distancing? And how many years was that spread over, vs the single month we'd be looking at here with an uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic? You're underestimating how bad things can get.
      • umanwizard 7y ago
        Everyone I know who has died could have been at least temporarily saved by extreme, civilization-destroying efforts. “Temporary social distancing” is much less benign than you make it sound. More like “intentionally creating an economic depression of unknown severity”. Life went on mostly as normal after the Spanish flu, by the way, which is the closest thing we can compare this to.
        • CydeWeys 7y ago
          Are you not aware that, during the Spanish flu, entire cities were shut down for months, exactly like what's happening now? And that without these actions the effects of it would have been much worse? You bringing this up is exactly proving the opposite of the point you're trying to make. Enforced social distancing is nothing NEW. It's as old as pandemics themselves.
• dmartinez 7y ago
  Serious question: how long does it take for humans to permanently adjust their sense of normalcy? There is a concept of `creeping normality`[0] that gets at this, but there isn't a lot of discussion about how to speed it up and make it permanent. We know from South Korea that public mask-wearing is probably the most effective form of dropping the R0 quickly. If somehow 100% of Americans could get access to face shields (via 3d printing, for example), then the engineering and logistic problem is solved. But the bigger problem is the social one. How do you socialize the acceptable use of masks or face shields in everyday public life? If enough people feel enough distress, I could see every person wearing masks, forever. If that happened, the talking points about this dragging on or immediately rebounding start to change. Given enough technical choices in lifestyle design, there has to be some optimal solution that minimizes droplet emission while maximizing freedom of movement. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality
• dkarl 7y ago
  I guess on an emotional level it makes sense for people to believe that if we do a good job of social distancing, we will be rewarded by finishing it sooner. That's usually how hard things work. But according to my understanding, there is no such thing as a local end to the coronavirus. Even if some locality (city, region, country) implements such effective measures that the virus stops spreading there, they will still be vulnerable to outbreaks so long as they have enough unexposed, non-immune people to sustain person-to-person spread. Unless you hermetically seal your borders a la Plague Inc., the way for a community to go back to normal life is for a critical percentage of people to be exposed so we get herd immunity under the conditions of normal life. In short: It's flattening the curve, not shrinking the area under the curve. The better we do it, the longer it will take. P.S. Since this is inevitably political: in my personal experience the misconception that "the better we do it the sooner we can stop" is being spread by liberal/lefty people who are in favor of strict social distancing for as long as it takes. I think they're trying to rally enthusiasm for compliance, but the fact that this optimistic spin coincides with the political rhetoric from certain conservative ideologues should give them pause. Some politicians are anticipating and subtly fomenting a loss of patience with social distancing, and anything that raises unrealistic expectations plays right into their hands.
  • kardos 7y ago
    > In short: It's flattening the curve, not shrinking the area under the curve. The better we do it, the longer it will take. That's too narrow of a view -- it assumes that we can't raise hospital capacity, that supplies shortages are permanent, that treatments won't be developed, that vaccines are vapourware. The point of flattening the curve is to give enough time for those things to be developed such that we can get hospitalization/death rates down and manage a higher rate of infections.
    • mirimir 7y ago
      I agree that effective medicines and/or vaccines would shrink the area aka total percentage of the population that eventually become infected. Although both remain unknowns, let's assume one or two years. Neither adequate supplies nor hospital capacity would shrink the area. But they would increase the maximum tolerable infection rate. That is, the infection rate that wouldn't overwhelm resources, and increase the death rate. Given all that, it seems pretty clear that disruptions will last at least a year or two. Perhaps we could move everyone at risk into isolation camps, and let everyone else get infected and recover, hopefully with some lasting immunity. And then perhaps use antiserum from them to help protect the isolated at-risk populations. However, said isolated at-risk populations would likely be at huge risk of mass die-offs, unless there was substantial compartmentalization. Maybe tent cities?
• MiguelVieira 7y ago
  Even if the current US shutdowns are effective, no more than 5 or 10 percent of the population will have gained immunity. We'll be nowhere near what's required for herd immunity. The shutdowns will at best give us a "do over", a second chance. The only way to end the shutdowns and not have cases explode again will be to replace them with a smarter strategy: wide-scale testing, fast contact tracing, antibody tests, mask-wearing, temperature checks, social distancing. The federal and state governments need to be planning this now. The virus has an R0 over 3 and getting it below 1 will not be easy. This all disappears if we find a vaccine or therapy, but hoping for that is not a plan.
• ipunchghosts 7y ago
  My guess we will be out of quarantine by memorial day.
• generalpass 7y ago
  Whenever I read these health experts, I get the impression they feel the economy is just some superfluous activity to keep the masses engaged.
  • Hokusai 7y ago
    > I get the impression they feel the economy is just some superfluous activity to keep the masses engaged. I understand your frustration, but, remember how news talk about computers and how much simplification is needed to get the overall public to understand the concepts. Do not judge experts from the two liners that you read in the news. Stimulus packages, social distancing, new ways of producing needed equipment... everything is part of solving the problem.
    • generalpass 7y ago
      > I understand your frustration, but, remember how news talk about computers and how much simplification is needed to get the overall public to understand the concepts. > Do not judge experts from the two liners that you read in the news. Stimulus packages, social distancing, new ways of producing needed equipment... everything is part of solving the problem. The article I'm commenting on, which I also read prior to commenting, is not what you are describing. From the article: > Those resources do not current exist, said Konyndyk, who also noted that hospital capacity across the country needs to be expanded and protective equipment for health workers restocked. There are currently global shortages. > “If we want to be able to — as I think we need to — turn our economy back on in a safe way, we need to be able to do that sort of thing at scale,” Konyndyk said. “And we do not have anywhere close to the public health infrastructure that’s needed to pull that off.” His statement suggests that he thinks the economy operates as a switch that is simply turned off and on at a whim, while also saying there do not exist enough resources to perform the needed tasks. Where does he presume these resources to come from? Printed money? Also from the article: > “We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down with a hammer and get to near zero cases. If they truly have nothing but the best intentions for keeping society healthy, they would understand that economics are more complex and more powerful than anyone can command or comprehend. If they keep the economy shut down all the way until there are "zero cases", there will be a lack of basic health care as resources rapidly dwindle. I also think they are terrible at grasping stats. I have yet to see published average random sampling of the population. Undergrad stats for nearly every major teaches you don't have to sample very many people to estimate a population. And there doesn't seem to be any attempt to analyze overall mortality rates, which should at least on a monthly basis be up over past years.
• kian 7y ago
  The number of people who die, on average, per day in the US (as of 2015) was roughly 7,500. We're less than 5 doubling periods from those being our daily numbers - i.e., for the death rate in the US to be doubled. At 3-5 days per doubling, that's less than a month away. Every day after that, until we either burn through 80% of the population or invent and distribute a vaccine, is going to be something we are unprepared for in our history as a nation. Approximately 8 doubling periods from then, or about two months away, and if we haven't gotten this under control, more people will die in one day than will die all year in a normal year. At least then, we will pretty much have hit the upper end of the curve, and at that point may well gain herd immunity. I give it about 4 more weeks until we consider hell to have officially broken loose. I expect human behavior to be less predictable at that point - or perhaps all too predictable...
• jackcosgrove 7y ago
  Sweden is the country to watch as they are the policy outlier. It appears that their infection, hospitalization, and death rates are not higher than other countries which implemented lockdowns. It also appears that their economic activity has declined by a similar amount as did that of countries which implemented lockdowns. So if staying at home is made voluntary, the economy won't reflate all of a sudden, and illness and mortality probably won't increase. Because even if staying at home is voluntary, many people will still stay at home, including potential patrons of reopened businesses. We'll see how things progress in the months ahead, but our course seems set regardless of policy.
  • Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Due to the nature of how we believe this virus spreads, it's likely too soon to read much into what's going on in Sweden. A month from now will probably give a much clearer picture of the differences in the two approaches.
  • viklove 7y ago
    You just can't compare Sweden to a country like the US. Sweden is largely homogenous with regard to race, religion, and culture. Their poverty rate is 1%. The US on the other hand is extremely diverse, has 30x+ the population, and has a 10% poverty rate.
  • nhebb 7y ago
    I don't understand why Sweden is being held up as a paragon. Their death rate is currently 9th worst worldwide and over 2x that of the United States': https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-death-rates-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-deat... Edit: Both are good replies. Thank you.
    • hocuspocus 7y ago
      Death rate is high in Sweden because the number of confirmed cases is wildly underreported. Comparing the death rate between countries is pointless at this stage, given the inconsistencies in reporting and the fairly long period between symptoms onset and death.
• fiftyfifty 7y ago
  The article doesn't say we are all going to be shut in for he next 12-18 months, it just says life is going to be different for a while. Once the number of cases is dropped down to a manageable level again, which for many states in the US is projected to be somewhere from the end of April to the end of June, we can open things up a bit provided we have a strategy for extensive testing, following exposures and isolating people that test positive. Yes that will still be significantly different than our previous lives, but for many people it will be much closer to how things were before. The key is we need to continue to ramp up testing and we need a system in place for authorities to randomly test healthy people so that they can monitor the extent of the outbreak before it turns into hundreds or thousands of deaths a day again. So the average person will be able to go to work, socialize and more or less return to life as normal but they may have to submit to a nasal swab once in a while on the way into the grocery store or something like that. It doesn't seem like a terrible trade-off.
• raincom 7y ago
  Folks in the developing countries don't have any safety net(no $1200 IRS check; no unemployment tax; etc). Most of them are day laborers or small scale business people selling food on the street side. If this will continue, many in the developed world, esp in cities, will struggle for food.
• twblalock 7y ago
  I'd like to see an economist stand on the podium next to the president and Dr. Fauci and talk about the other side of the trade-off the government has decided to make.
• toohotatopic 7y ago
  >Though vaccine development is proceeding at a historic pace, in a best-case scenario a product won’t be available for the general public for at least 18 months, and likely longer. Without a vaccine, the limiting factor are ICU beds. If 1% of sick people need an ICU bed, then the number of infections has to be limited to 100 times the number of ICU beds. Now, if people need 30 days to heal, and you have 100,000 ICU beds, that means you can treat 1,200,000 people per year and let 120,000,000 people be infected. There are 300 million people in the USA, so it takes roughly 2 years to reach something like herd immunity.
• udfalkso 7y ago
  The key to this is better testing and positive interventions. Right now we are just flattening the curve, but there are a couple things that could help speed up a return to normal life long before a vaccine: 1) Widespread, accurate testing: For example, if we could test everyone in a few minutes before they enter a workplace or home that could go a long way to enabling many activities to restart. 2) Improvements to treatment: If some relatively safe malaria drug or other intervention can reduce the severity of the disease such that treatment requires days instead of weeks and/or doesn't require ventilators/ICU this would be a huge boon. Less people would die, most importantly, but also the healthcare system would be able to handle many more cases, further reducing the need for extreme social disruption like we are doing now. I'm personally optimistic that at least some material progress will be made on both fronts in the near future. A planet full of very smart people is working on this.
• carapace 7y ago
  We can and should reframe the economic disruption as an opportunity to build a new and more humane economy, even before the virus is brought under control. We should be able to flatten the curve and tackle our economic issues at the same time: the resources required are orthogonal while the benefits are synergistic.
• NopeNotToday 7y ago
  Looks like HN killed this post. It's no longer showing on the homepage
• hkai 7y ago
  The 2008 crisis brought us extra half million cancer deaths, according to a study in Lancet. That's only cancer! It doesn't include poverty, other disease, less funds for charities, suicides and other forms of misery. It seems we are setting ourselves up for countless millions deaths globally if we continue with the lockdown.
• xtiansimon 7y ago
  Something wrong with this website statnews.com-- At least for me using Safari browser. I was auto-redirected something like 40+ times to upgrade my Norton Anti-virus, to install Flash, and one or two other fracking things.