Success With Flattening the Curve
Remember how we were projected to have 2.5 Million cases? We have reduced the projected number of infected Americans by 1.5 Million to only 1 Million. 1 Million is not great, but that’s a big change. That is called flattening the curve and everyone should be thinking that is really amazing (I know I am). They did not mention the number in the briefing (frustratingly). But forecasting has gotten a bad rep in the past.
For those who are math nerds – that’s a linear fit to 1,000,000 (switch from exponential), which some dude in the early 20th century proposed was when the growth in the number of reported influenza cases was hitting it’s predictable rounded peak forecasted the maximum cumulative cases (the limit). I’ve been trying to go through my notes to remember more about how this all works because I don’t remember the name of who came up with all of this and I’m trying to find the paper. I will update this and replace this rambling text when I do.
Recovery in the US
Recovery is not a guarantee that you will not get SARS-CoV-2 again. There are recorded cases of reinfection internationally. We do not have enough data to know if this is reactivation of latent virus or if this is true reinfection. That said, we are finally looking for asymptomatic, both recovered and not, individuals.
A vaccine would be able to address this by using adjuvants designed to induce helper T cell immunity in addition to antibody based immunity. Vaccines take time. Realistically a good vaccine will be on the market in March 2021 at the absolute earliest. Anything before that and I will be floored if it has sufficient efficacy to help.
In New York City, 40-50% of patients experiencing severe acute respiratory distress will be placed on a ventilator. If recovery required a ventilator, the testimonies from survivors do not suggest a population able to return to the workforce tomorrow. Shortness of breath, weakness, and other long term effects of hypoxia threaten the be permanent disabilities in this portion of the population.
But what if you do have immunity? You’ll be able to test that. What if you’re one of the lucky ones? I guess that’s up to you.
We’re in this together.
At each of these state clusters there is at least one urban center that has the dominant reservoir population. Once movement between urban centers (New York -> Chicago -> Houston -> Miami -> Atlanta -> Boston -> Dallas -> L.A. -> San Francisco -> Chicago -> Orlando -> Pittsburgh -> (etc. etc. etc.)) stops then there will no longer be additions of infected individuals into the populations. This is why non-essential planes need to be grounded.
I live in Montana. I am so blessed. I want to make it clear that we still need to behave. It only takes 1 person to infect 10.
My family and people I love live in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, California, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Arizona and Maine. I’m terrified for everyone.
We’re going to gradually come to a new normal. Ask me questions and I’ll eventually address them in updates on these original posts.
As a change of pace, I’m going to stop writing about the coronavirus for a while unless there’s something people specifically think of graphs or other things that would be useful questions to be answered in something new instead of an update. I still have a backlog of a couple posts that will still get done though.
I will be starting to write short stories and weird little memoir style posts so people can enjoy my writing separate from the reviews.
Thank you for reading. Without you this is a shout into the void.