Two More Years
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Enjoy your weekend!
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/health/report-covid-two-more-years/
The new coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years—until 60% to 70% of the population has been infected, a team of longstanding pandemic experts predicted in a report released Thursday.
They recommended that the US prepare for a worst-case scenario that includes a second big wave of coronavirus infections in the fall and winter. Even in a best-case scenario, people will continue to die from the virus, they predicted.
"This thing's not going to stop until it infects 60 to 70 percent of people," Mike Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, told CNN.
"The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology."
Osterholm has been writing about the risk of pandemics for 20 years and has advised several presidents. He wrote the report along with Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, who is also a top expert on pandemics; Dr. Kristine Moore, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist who is now medical director for CIDRAP; and historian John Barry, who wrote the 2004 book "The Great Influenza" about the 1918 flu pandemic.Because Covid-19 is new, no one has any immunity, they said. "The length of the pandemic will likely be 18 to 24 months, as herd immunity gradually develops in the human population," they wrote.
Their predictions are different from models presented by groups such as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington or the models produced by Imperial College London, whose report predicting millions of deaths in the US and UK helped galvanize responses by both governments.
The CIDRAP-led team used those reports, historical data on past pandemics, and published reports about the medical details of Covid-19 to put together their forecast.
"I have said for a long time that when you are trying to understand how infectious disease is going to unfold, you should rely on history as well as models," Lipsitch told CNN. For instance, pandemic infections don't tend to die down in the summer, like seasonal flu does., he said."Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Copper said in Two More Years:
Mr. Trump says covid-19 will go away.
cnn says it won't.
Shocking
Based on past performance I don't have much faith in the reliability of either party.
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Yeah, all of speculation this is so dependent on whether somebody develops an effective vaccine.
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Initial testing is looking promising. In monkeys anyway.
I'm not sure why researchers in Oxford had to do their testing on monkeys in Montana. That just seems off. I have been to Montana, and there are no monkeys. Lots of deer, elk, moose, bear, wolves and other creatures. No monkeys.
"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in Two More Years:
Initial testing is looking promising. In monkeys anyway.
I'm not sure why researchers in Oxford had to do their testing on monkeys in Montana. That just seems off. I have been to Montana, and there are no monkeys. Lots of deer, elk, moose, bear, wolves and other creatures. No monkeys.
The question you're not asking is whether they have bats.
Hmmm?
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Yep. They have bats.
And speaking of batty, it seems our neighbours up north may be making progress on a vaccine.
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It’s always something.
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My fear is the next wave will have a much broader base than the first.
If you think about it, the country pretty much shut down at the same time (at first approximation). I think something like 45 states closed schools in the same week (16-20 March). Yet at that time there were only a few hot areas, many places had yet to have their first Covid death (I just randomly checked Ohio and Mass, both had their first deaths the end of that very week).
Now the virus has a much broader base, and we're starting to open up? We might get lucky with some seasonality but even if we do that will just make us a bit too comfortable come September.
It’s always something.
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@jon-nyc the complacency that's coming with "we're at the peak" is disturbing. The fact that we're at the peak (and I doubt that, by the way) is no excuse for relaxing the standards in place now.
The difficult question is what is the relative cost in keeping things shut down vs the cost of letting it run rampant. Somewhere, I read that suicide has a direct correlation with unemployment rate. Are those lives less "valuable" than those that die of infection?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in Two More Years:
@jon-nyc the complacency that's coming with "we're at the peak" is disturbing. The fact that we're at the peak (and I doubt that, by the way) is no excuse for relaxing the standards in place now.
The difficult question is what is the relative cost in keeping things shut down vs the cost of letting it run rampant. Somewhere, I read that suicide has a direct correlation with unemployment rate. Are those lives less "valuable" than those that die of infection?
They are not less valuable. But unlike COVID-related deaths, suicide rates do not increase exponentially with unemployment.
There is no faster growing death rate in the world right now. So yeah, the priority needs to be to figure out how to manage the virus while addressing mental health, unemployment, food supply chains, Ghana funeral memes and everything else going on.
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It’s going to be a balancing act everywhere until a vaccine is in place or somehow it disappears.
Most places will reopen soon but social distancing policies will remain, those at highest risk will remain quarantined, telework will overall remain since the prerequisite schools and daycares are a big old TBD, etc. Travel will be toast for at least another year, the holiday season will includes tons of e-commerce and video calls... but to @Copper ’s point, my main metric is the ability for the health care system to not be overrun. This disease is not that deadly if there’s the capacity to treat it.
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@89th said in Two More Years:
This disease is not that deadly if there’s the capacity to treat it.
That's only true by percentage, not volume. If 60 percent of us had it, which would be required to start looking at herd immunity, you're talking 2 to 3 million deaths. That's a very small percentage of infected but still a shitload of people.
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Fair point. Still, the balancing act is inevitable. I think people will become numb to it (working from home and social distancing felt weird for like a week for me, but feels normal [but not natural] for me now).
The economy can’t remain shut down for much longer, no matter how much cash Congress injects into the system, the ripple effect of people not working > not paying rent > not paying mortgages > defaulting on loans > system crashes...
Pretty soon it’s:
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@89th said in Two More Years:
Fair point. Still, the balancing act is inevitable. I think people will become numb to it (working from home and social distancing felt weird for like a week for me, but feels normal [but not natural] for me now).
The economy can’t remain shut down for much longer, no matter how much cash Congress injects into the system, the ripple effect of people not working > not paying rent > not paying mortgages > defaulting on loans > system crashes...
Pretty soon it’s:
Definitely. I think two major factors are at play:
- Losing the ability to work is pretty damn tragic. Much more so here than any other country, where many folks have their health insurance (and that of their families) tied to their jobs. Prospects look very bleak indeed when your entire work sector is now nonexistent. Those folks aren't going to put up with staying home and they're right; no stimulus package in the world is going to fix their lives completely. Not even close.
- A whole lot more people are going to die at the hands of coddled, 'Murican crybabies who demand rights but refuse to adopt any personal responsibility. The exact same motherfuckers who spout "liberty" and "freedom" a little too much in their Facebook feeds and watch YouTube prepper porn are going to kill some strangers because they're unwilling to wait for haircuts. I'm all for publicly shaming these assholes.
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Regardless of how we feel as individuals we will see soon how long people will stay indoors afraid of the wolf outside. The only shot one has to keeping people at bay is to convince them that waiting will yield a better outcome. Moving the goal post further out is not helpful.
