I watched the official briefing by the Dutch "National Institute for Public Health and the Environment" to our "Second Chamber" (our version of US Congress), and again was impressed by the very clear and scientifically founded description of the current Dutch Status. Totally exempt of bullshit or bloated statemnts, and even loaded questions were clinically disected and fully answered.
One of the parliamentarians' questions was, "When we're effectively flattening the curve, how long will it take to go back to normal".
The (only) correct answer:
1. That is not our main focus, we're trying to avoid ICU and Medical personnel overload.
2. Besides, it also depends on how well the general public adheres to the guidelines.
3. Until new insights emerge that allow us to change the guidelines or principles, count on several months as a minimum.
This was surrounded by solid case evidence, comparisons with what other countries did (insofar relevant for the local situation, which it often is not),
easy to understand graphs, ensemble models of all possible modeled outcomes and which working scenarios were chosen and why.
The Dutch "R0 or R-naught" has now fallen to approx. 2.0, but when the latest numbers are validated and added, we're heading for an R0=1. But there is a delay of 2-3 days in getting the latest ICU statistics, so thing may change a bit in either direction.
Based on the current demographics of patients, but that may be different for other countries, it looks like 2% of the patients will die. Children seem to be relatively unaffected, and a study is being conducted to see if the mechanism of becoming contagious, or susceptibility to getting infected, is different from older people. The results are expected in the near term.
