Alright, so that’s beds. Now masks. Feds say we have a national stockpile of 12M N95 masks and 30M surgical masks (which are not ideal, but better than nothing). 13/n
-
-
I’m an engineer. This is what my mind does all day: I run back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to estimate order-of-magnitude impacts. I’ve been on high alarm about this disease since ~Jan 19 after reading clinical indicators in the first papers emerging from Wuhan. 24/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
Nothing in the last 6 weeks has dampened my alarm in the slightest. To the contrary, we’re seeing abject refusal of many countries to adequately respond or prepare. Of course some of these estimates will be wrong, even substantially wrong. 25/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
But I have no reason to think they’ll be orders-of-magnitude wrong. Even if your personal risk of death is very, very low, don’t mock decisions like canceling events or closing workplaces as undue “panic”. 26/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
These measures are the bare minimum we should be doing to try to shift the peak – to slow the rise in cases so that healthcare systems are less overwhelmed. Each day that we can delay an extra case is a big win for the HC system. 27/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
And yes, you really should prepare to buckle down for a bit. All services and supply chains will be impacted. Why risk the stress of being ill-prepared? 28/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
Worst case, I’m massively wrong and you now have a huge bag of rice and black beans to burn through over the next few months and enough Robitussin to trip out. 29/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
One more thought: you’ve probably seen multiple respected epidemiologists have estimated that 20-70% of world will be infected within the next year. If you use 6-day doubling rate I mentioned above, we land at ~2-6 billion infected by sometime in July of this year. 30/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
Obviously I think the doubling time will start to slow once a sizeable fraction of the population has been infected, simply because of herd immunity and a smaller susceptible population. 31/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
But take the scenarios above (full beds, no PPE, etc, at just 1% of the US population infected) and stretch them out over just a couple extra months. 32/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
That timeline roughly fits with consensus end-game numbers from these highly esteemed epidemiologists. Again, we’re talking about discrepancies of mere days or weeks one direction or another, but not disagreements in the overall magnitude of the challenge. 33/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
This is not some hypothetical, fear-mongering, worst-case scenario. This is reality, as far as anyone can tell with the current available data. 34/n
Pokaż ten wątek -
That’s all for now. Standard disclaimers apply: I’m a PhD biologist but *not* an epidemiologist. Thoughts my own. Yadda yadda. Stay safe out there. /end
Pokaż ten wątek -
Addendum: to anyone who found this useful or interesting, highly recommend you follow
@trvrb who actually does modeling and forecasting for a living. This thread is a great place to start: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1236097553520660483?s=21 …https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1236097553520660483 …
Pokaż ten wątek -
A lot of folks have been requesting a compilation of this thread that they can share with friends and family who don't use Twitter. You can find that here, courtesy of
@threadreaderapp:https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html …Pokaż ten wątek -
I'm honored that
@statnews invited me to publish my thread as a slightly more nuanced opinion piece (including new details such as the striking differences in hospital beds per capita btwn US and S Korea). "Simple math offers alarming answers" on#covid19:https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19/ …Pokaż ten wątek -
While
#globalhealth and infectious diseases have been a passion of mine for ~15 years, 4 years ago I made the leap into#foodtechnology bc I feel this is actually the most impactful area for addressing global health. My latest op-ed in@WIRED explains why.https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-modernizing-meat-production-will-help-us-avoid-pandemics/ …Pokaż ten wątek
Koniec rozmowy
Nowa rozmowa -
Wydaje się, że ładowanie zajmuje dużo czasu.
Twitter jest przeciążony lub wystąpił chwilowy problem. Spróbuj ponownie lub sprawdź status Twittera, aby uzyskać więcej informacji.