This morning I caught a snippet of an interview in which the interviewee said that once the number in a population with a disease exceeds 1% it’s very unlikely that the spread of the disease can be slowed by the mitigation techniques that we’ve been using. If that’s the case we might want to consider that in the context of this story from UPI:
New York City had a high rate of infection with the new coronavirus long before its first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on March 1, researchers report.
By that date, more than 1.7 million people in the city — 20% of the population — had already been infected, and the COVID-19 death rate was close to 1%, or 10 times deadlier than the flu.
To arrive at that conclusion, the researchers analyzed nearly 10,700 plasma samples taken between Feb. 9 and July 5, 2020. The samples were checked for the presence of antibodies to past infections of COVID-19, rather than the presence of the virus.
There was very little testing capacity in New York City at the beginning of its outbreak in early March, the researchers noted.
“We now know there were many asymptomatic and mild-to-moderate cases that likely went undetected,” said senior study author Dr. Emilia Mia Sordillo, an attending physician in infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine and the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City.
That certainly confirms the surmise I’ve expressed for some time that the only real hope of containing the disease was in China back in December and that would have required a very different posture on the part of the Chinese authorities.
Lincoln mayor , Leirion Gaylor Baird ,an outspoken advocate of Covid-19 safety measures has just announced self quarantine after her husband’s positive test results .
It’s apparently all around us folks.
Just to clarify it would have taken a superhuman, miraculous effort by the Chinese on a level never before accomplished. They would have had to recognize this illness as being so different from other respiratory viruses going on at the same time, recognize its potential and then shut down all travel in and out of that area, and the entire country to be safe. By the time they would have figured out this was bad enough to do all that it was too late. They would have acted on the suspicion that it was a new virus and that it might be bad.
Steve
I think the lesson is that in a global economy stopping highly transmissible diseases like this is just about impossible. We should prepare for the future accordingly.
What does that mean though? I also think that steve is overstating what the Chinese needed to do. They needed to shut down international flights out of Wuhan as much as they did train traffic coming out of Wuhan. They needed to be more forthcoming about what they were seeing there than they were. Instead they circled the wagons back in December.
“What does that mean though? I also think that steve is overstating what the Chinese needed to do. They needed to shut down international flights out of Wuhan as much as they did train traffic coming out of Wuhan. ”
I think the first thing is to realize we can’t depend on other countries, especially China. So we have to do what we can here to prepare for and manage future outbreaks and to detect them as soon as possible. We still have shortages of PPE including N95 masks. We still lack the capacity for individuals to get timely test results. We could probably plus-up our research efforts to study diseases around the world so we can get a head-start if one jumps to humans. The feds might need to give states additional monies to increase the capacity of their health departments. This actually happened after 9/11 and the anthrax scare – the preparation and training that local health departments received likely made their covid response better than it would have been otherwise, but that’s just a guess.
The other lesson is that we need to concentrate on our own responses. This still talking about China doing stuff different is nonsense. We will never be able to control what other countries do. We cant count on them making a perfect response. We haven’t done so when faced with our own infectious disease issues.
We now know that we had good intelligence much earlier than thought that this was a respiratory virus with person to person communication. The attempts to blame WHO were BS as we already had good evidence. We could have had a real travel ban, not the fake one for political purposes done buy Trump. We should have had tests so we could surveil. We should have started on massive PPE and mask production (which we still dont have BTW). We should have not had our leadership undercutting efforts to deal with the virus.
Steve
“They needed to shut down international flights out of Wuhan as much as they did train traffic coming out of Wuhan. ”
They would have needed to do that somewhere around the first 50 infections. No one would shut down that early. As you pointed out before no one was really going to have complete travel bans when we had only 10 known infections in the country.
Steve
Perhaps we should be taking a much more arm’s-length approach to dealing with China.
For a nation that prides itself on innovation, these masks we wear are the same model we had 100 years ago. most of your breath goes around and it’s no wonder many find them futile. hang them on the rearview, shake them off in your face and put them on to go into the store.
I understand masks are important but not more important than $1/ a pop.
Another thing, living like many, paycheck to paycheck, in a six person household, what happens in a 14 day quarantine? Not much different.
Kids come and go, spouse comes and goes, you lie about the infection because you cannot miss 2 weeks pay.
Is it any wonder at all this won’t work?
As Ive been saying for months, the notion of “stopping the virus†has been, and is, a fools errand. No country has been able to do it. The most strident, non-common sense, measures taken have only served political purposes and as a placebo.
Absent a good vaccine we dont entirely stop it, but we can do things to minimize it. Here is something I have been hearing a lot lately. People are self quarantining so that their parents/grandparents can come visit them. That means no going to restaurants, no bars, working from home, etc. There are, of course variations as different families figure out risk tolerance. In some cases people are still going to work, taking as many precautions as they can while working, then otherwise quarantining. Or maybe they include limited trips to the grocery store. The points is that people are limiting their activities in order to try to protect family.
Steve
That pretty much describes me. I go to work two days a week, working from home the rest of the time. I go to the grocery store about every four days, a far cry from the daily shopping that I prefer.
The problem with steve’s comment is the word “minimize.” That’s pure bullshit.
Just as any virus outbreak can be modulated by hand washing, etc etc. So can this one. No one argues that. But “minimizing” requires bubble boy type actions, wholly absurd on their face. The cost/benefit is simply unacceptable and a “solution,” is obviously wildly ineffective worldwide, and made up out of whole cloth compared to pandemics in the late 50’s and 60’s. No, this was political. Purely political. Shameful and ghoulish. And the people victimized should be really pissed off.
Sweden is not in the toilet. Look at their policy.
“Just as any virus outbreak can be modulated by hand washing, etc etc. So can this one. No one argues that. ”
No, actually your team does argue this. You guys claim we dont need to do anything. The only people dying are people who were going to die in a few weeks anyway. That we should just let it all go and achieve herd immunity.
Minimize? I site and example of people doing stuff on their own so they can have Thanksgiving dinner and you jump to bubble boy? Get hold of yourself.
“Purely political.” No, that would actually be your do nothing approach, all just to help (try) Trump win an election. Most of us actually care about illness, deaths and economic wellbeing. We value them aside from politics.
Sweden? They did lockdown lite. They had far, far more deaths than their neighbors and so far their economy isn’t doing better.Their second quarter drop in GDP was the same or worse than neighbors and most of the EU. Their 3rd quarter numbers are in line with he rest of the EU. Lots more deaths and an economy that performs just as poorly. The only reason to like that outcome would be…Political.
Steve