So I guess the implicit covid plan is to:
1. Hope more people get vaccinated/maybe boosters
2. Try to keep covid levels low enough that hospitals aren’t totally overwhelmed
3. Eventually get herd immunity?
Anyone have good modeling about how long this will take?
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This seems like the implicit plan to me, except that 2 might be “eventually get bored and stop trying to do anything at all”, which does a lot of visible damage but also ends somewhat quickly.
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I dunno, I think at least some people will always make a lot of noise when ICUs get full (and elective surgeries all get canceled), and that will be part of the control system?
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I agree that’s the critical question. One possibility that seems reasonably likely to me (based on aïve SIR math) is that we wait until ICUs are overflowing and that’s too late for interventions to make a difference.
This isn’t compatible with what we saw in India/UK, though. 🤷♂️
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I’m not sure too late to make a difference would mean? It could mean ICUs are still overwhelmed for a while, but unless population immunity is high, why wouldn’t measures make some difference?
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Here’s how I’d see that happening: suppose that we’re pretty far into a big exponential wave. By the time the ICUs fill up (30/100k in ICU), that means that, say, 3000/100k = 3% have covid (at 1% chance of needing ICU given infection).
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Assume it takes two weeks to need an ICU bed from infection. At Delta growth rates (doubling roughly weekly or so?) that means you could end up with a peak load of >10% already “locked in” if you wait until ICUs are full to act.
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I actually don’t think that can happen in many places (like the US northeast) because they’re less than 10% of the population with immunity (via infection or vaccination) away from herd immunity. But you can still overwhelm ICUs.
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And to reiterate for clarity: this assume that the rest of the control system does little to stop this, and uses dynamics that don’t seem to capture the giant reversal we saw with Delta elsewhere.