If we're to trust the Wuhan data, it took 2 weeks for daily new cases to begin dropping. The good news is that once that begin, the decline was ~as steep as the growth. The bad news is that cumulative active cases continued to rise for some time.https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1240689047418236932 …
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Replying to @webdevMason
Isn't that problematic? Unless lockdown becomes permanent, don't we want a continued slow growth of cases to create herd immunity? We're still a year from having a vaccine, so our only option at the moment is controlled infection.
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Replying to @diracdelta
"Herd immunity" is speculative. Immediate reinfection appears very unlikely, but we don't know whether immunity post-infection lasts a few months or a few years.
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Replying to @webdevMason
Herd immunity isn't particularly speculative. If it was, vaccines would be impossible for corona.
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Replying to @diracdelta
The duration of post-infection immunity is speculative. We have annual flu vaccines for a reason, and most communities never build up anything close to herd immunity in any given year. How feasible is it for the novel coronavirus? We just don't know.
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Replying to @webdevMason
Thanks for the clarification and explaining your model.
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Replying to @diracdelta @webdevMason
To check my understanding, an implication you are alluding to is that lockdown cannot end until we have better data (and possibly, not even then, depending on how long immunity lasts), correct?
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Replying to @diracdelta
No, not necessarily. The problem is that there is a ~2-week delay (due to incubation, symptoms slowly arising after) between the actual state of the problem and our knowing about it. Lockdown allows us to see where we stand without making the problem even worse
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Replying to @webdevMason @diracdelta
If after 2 weeks of lockdown the regional medical system is still functional and new cases are beginning to drop at a rate that appears not to overwhelm surge capacity, you can start to relax restrictions and allow *some* new infections
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The critical thing is that the fatality rate appears to be something in the realm of 0.5-1% with treatment available and ~2-6% where healthcare systems have been inundated to a greater or lesser degree. And all-cause mortality will also rise where hospitals are overwhelmed.
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Replying to @webdevMason @diracdelta
So even if you *have* to accept some spread of a relatively dangerous illness in order to keep society functional, you really, really want to make sure it's slow enough for the hospitals to keep up
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Replying to @webdevMason @diracdelta
Our capacity to fight this will also improve with time, even prior to a vaccine, as a result of validated treatments and a refashioning of the supply chain for much-needed medical supplies and personal protective gear. We do need to buy ourselves time for this, but not 18 months
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