4 ms·

To be fair if we don't control this thing you have a near 100% chance if catching covid at some point in the next few months. Assuming we have an effective vacc

To be fair if we don't control this thing you have a near 100% chance if catching covid at some point in the next few months. Assuming we have an effective vaccine in 6 months you would then have a near 0% chance of catching covid again. This works out to the lifetime chance of death being the IFR. So between 1/1000 to 1/100 (depending on which study for IFR you look at). If we don't develop an effective vaccine then given immunity seems to be temporary (as with other coronaviruses) most of us will catch this every year so a really high proportion of us will die of covid eventually (where eventually is in many years).

mehrdadn 6y ago
> To be fair if we don't control this thing you have a near 100% chance if catching covid at some point in the next few months. By "near 100% chance" here do you mean the fraction of the population getting the disease, or the likelihood of getting the disease even if you take the appropriate precautions? Or to put it another way: imagine 1% of the population taking all the ideal precautions for the next year (and only going outside fro obvious necessities, like food/groceries/etc.). Will they also have a near 100% chance of getting it in your model? Or does 100% merely refer to # of infections / population?
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
  The rate at which this thing grows took London from a fraction of a perentage to 5-10% infected at the same time in about 4 weeks. It could have easily hit 30-50% of people infected at the same time in another 2 weeks without the lockdown. Unless you literally shut in and careful wash and disinfect all your deliveries during the period when your delivery driver has a 1 in approx 5 chance of being an asymptomatic (but infectious carrier) you are nearly certain to catch it.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    My memory is kind of fading w.r.t. what exactly happened in London, but I seem to recall their plan was pretty much explicitly "let's embrace COVID so we can get herd immunity"?
    - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
      It seemed that way (I'm not certain it wasn't just incompetence in realising how quickly it was spreading). Then they did strict lockdown and worked hard to shield the most vulnerable. The shielding was poorly executed - like everything the UK government do.
      - mehrdadn 6y ago
        Yeah so it's hard to see if we can use London as an example. Any other places that might be more representative?
        gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
        They had 'spread the curve' type measures (stay home if sick and 'use common sense' etc) for 10 days. The infection rates carried on doubling during that time. London is a perfect example of how quickly this thing can spread in a modern city and how many people get sick at once. The only reason the death rate wasn't way higher is that many many people self isolated for their own protection in early March. I know less about New York but it sounds similar.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      Herd immunity was England's plan initially - until they ran the numbers. Then they looked at a new model and realised that if they achieved herd immunity, the predicted number of people who would die, this summer, was going to be massive. They also realised that some of those deaths would be due to the healthcare system being unable to treat a lot of people, making the number who would die even larger, and avoidably so. Presumably hospitals turning critical patients away would also be socially & politically disastrous. This started the "flatten the curve" strategy. So they rapidly did a U-turn towards progressively increasing lockdowns, and now decreasing restrictions. Now with a bit more thinking behind us, we also realise herd immunity might not even work as predicted, because it's not clear what are the long term effects of the virus, including immunity and ability to be infectious to others after new exposure despite having had the virus before. Like in the USA, people aren't complying with much consistency, and it looks obvious that many people, mostly younger, don't care to protect others. The emerging anecdotes and data about long term damage when surviving do not seem to bother them either. Nonetheless, it looks like the strategy has made a large difference to the outcome compared with what early models predicted if there were no restrictions. And now with the emerging data about long term harm (including evidence suggesting asymptomatic carriers who don't know they had it but may have sustained organ damage affecting them in future), we can be confident the strategy, by reducing the numbers of people who get it, will have made a difference to more people than previously thought. This doesn't stop a few people from saying that the lockdown was unnecessary because there were only X deaths and the temporary new hospitals were not much used, when X is because of lockdown (and is larger than the models predicted). There are people with no brain apparently.

mehrdadn 6y ago

> To be fair if we don't control this thing you have a near 100% chance if catching covid at some point in the next few months. By "near 100% chance" here do you mean the fraction of the population getting the disease, or the likelihood of getting the disease even if you take the appropriate precautions? Or to put it another way: imagine 1% of the population taking all the ideal precautions for the next year (and only going outside fro obvious necessities, like food/groceries/etc.). Will they also have a near 100% chance of getting it in your model? Or does 100% merely refer to # of infections / population?

gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
The rate at which this thing grows took London from a fraction of a perentage to 5-10% infected at the same time in about 4 weeks. It could have easily hit 30-50% of people infected at the same time in another 2 weeks without the lockdown. Unless you literally shut in and careful wash and disinfect all your deliveries during the period when your delivery driver has a 1 in approx 5 chance of being an asymptomatic (but infectious carrier) you are nearly certain to catch it.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  My memory is kind of fading w.r.t. what exactly happened in London, but I seem to recall their plan was pretty much explicitly "let's embrace COVID so we can get herd immunity"?
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
    It seemed that way (I'm not certain it wasn't just incompetence in realising how quickly it was spreading). Then they did strict lockdown and worked hard to shield the most vulnerable. The shielding was poorly executed - like everything the UK government do.
    - mehrdadn 6y ago
      Yeah so it's hard to see if we can use London as an example. Any other places that might be more representative?
      - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
        They had 'spread the curve' type measures (stay home if sick and 'use common sense' etc) for 10 days. The infection rates carried on doubling during that time. London is a perfect example of how quickly this thing can spread in a modern city and how many people get sick at once. The only reason the death rate wasn't way higher is that many many people self isolated for their own protection in early March. I know less about New York but it sounds similar.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    Herd immunity was England's plan initially - until they ran the numbers. Then they looked at a new model and realised that if they achieved herd immunity, the predicted number of people who would die, this summer, was going to be massive. They also realised that some of those deaths would be due to the healthcare system being unable to treat a lot of people, making the number who would die even larger, and avoidably so. Presumably hospitals turning critical patients away would also be socially & politically disastrous. This started the "flatten the curve" strategy. So they rapidly did a U-turn towards progressively increasing lockdowns, and now decreasing restrictions. Now with a bit more thinking behind us, we also realise herd immunity might not even work as predicted, because it's not clear what are the long term effects of the virus, including immunity and ability to be infectious to others after new exposure despite having had the virus before. Like in the USA, people aren't complying with much consistency, and it looks obvious that many people, mostly younger, don't care to protect others. The emerging anecdotes and data about long term damage when surviving do not seem to bother them either. Nonetheless, it looks like the strategy has made a large difference to the outcome compared with what early models predicted if there were no restrictions. And now with the emerging data about long term harm (including evidence suggesting asymptomatic carriers who don't know they had it but may have sustained organ damage affecting them in future), we can be confident the strategy, by reducing the numbers of people who get it, will have made a difference to more people than previously thought. This doesn't stop a few people from saying that the lockdown was unnecessary because there were only X deaths and the temporary new hospitals were not much used, when X is because of lockdown (and is larger than the models predicted). There are people with no brain apparently.