What have we learned in a week's time?
We don't know the death rate and the range is rather large.
No one can give an accurate prediction on how many will die. I read today from different scientists that regardless of what we do it could be as little as 10,000 or as much as 2,500,000 in the USA, which is a pretty big range.
This is not what I’ve been reading. Yes, There has been a wide range of total death predictions, but I haven’t read any source that says what we do doesn’t matter. The majority of sources I see are writing that moderate social distancing will be moderately helpful in reducing both the rate of the spread and total infections, and that extreme distancing will be more effective.
China claims to have surprised it, but since they lied about so much already, can they really be trusted.
We don't know if self-isolation will actually end it, or just delay the inevitable. There is a very real possibility that as soon as we come out, we will just start infecting each other again.
We don't know if a second waive will come or even if you can be infected again after already having it.
There are other possibilities besides “end it” and “delay the inevitable,” neither of which seems like the likely result. Every article I’ve read from a scientific source has suggested that reducing the rate of spread (through social distancing) also reduces the total number of infections. Of immediate benefit is that it will reduce the demand pressure on the available medical care so that a greater percentage of victims will be able to get the care they need. Longer term, it will give time for treatments to be tested and manufacturing scaled, and for a vaccine to be developed. With conflicting voices in the air, I choose to trust those with epidemiological cred, and those voices all seem to be saying that social isolation is the best tool we have until treatments have been developed.
We should assume that there
will be a second wave. But if we have been successful in developing therapies during this first wave, the second should have less-severe consequences.
I have not seen any realistic plan to increase ICU beds, nor have there been any reports on this happening. So, even if we can flatten this curve best case scenario, we still are going to have one really big mess on our hands with near the same amount of loss of life.
I’ve seen reports of hospital ships being dispatched to hot cities, and of university dormitories being offered up for hospital use. Neither of these provide ICU beds, but they do provide ways to relieve some of the pressure in hospitals by removing other patients with less-severe disease. That said, this ad-hoc approach is nowhere near sufficient, and the power to ramp up production and distribution of ventilators, etc rests with the POTUS, who seems unwilling to use it.
We have no clear end game and no one in government seems to be thinking about it. Or if they are, they sure are not telling us.
So what do we know? Neither Trump nor any governor has any clue to exactly what is going to happen nor how to handle it. I mean are you actually feeling confident in our leaders' response, especially all of the govenors'? I know I'm not. The economy is being totally destroyed, which will lead to an increase in suicides, drug addiction and related deaths, divorce and family break ups, evictions and foreclosures, prostitution and sex trafficking, and a complete and total depression if we continue down this path that will fundamentally change the country. And it may be all for naught anyway. I might also add much of this people will not recover from.
Like I said, I have no aspirations to sit back and watch the world go to hell by our own making. Unless some serious plan comes out or the death rate skyrockets, dont expect many to keep to this.
Insofar as what is up to me or not, I by myself certainly cant change this. But when half of the country changes their minds, it will no longer be up to the government either.
It seems to me irrational to keep asking for an ”end game” at this stage. It’s like asking for an end game in a war—you know the end game is to defeat the enemy, but you can’t know how long it will take to do that, or what the cost will be. But without total commitment to defeating the enemy, you are bound to lose the war.
There
will be economic disruption in any case.
If we enforce “shelter in place” for two months, and it slows the infection curve, there will be much economic hardship.
If we do nothing, and our hospitals are overwhelmed and the virus kills by the thousands, people will shut themselves off, demand will tank, and there will be much economic hardship.
If millions of people die, demand will tank and there will be much economic hardship.
Given that economic pain is unavoidable, it seems to me that the logical choice is to lock the country down for as long as it takes and get the greatest economic pain over with up front so we can start rebuilding sooner.
There is no real plan, and in very short order, no one is going to have any confidence anymore in our elected officials without one. Then it all falls apart.
Well, that horse has already left the barn at the national level, but there is some very good leadership stepping up at the state level. Governors and state-level CDC directors lack the power to redirect manufacturing and distribution, but some are doing a very good job of articulating policy that should slow the spread of the disease and providing good information on what to do and why. But we really are suffering from the lack of leadership at the federal level.
