Journal Okian Warrior's Journal: Insightful Coronavirus discussion 2
Slashdot has many Coronavirus stories and lots of comments... but very little insight. Mostly it's all insults - one side to the other.
Can we have some rational discussion about the pandemic in terms of the shutdown? We used to do that here. I know there are medical experts, economists, lawyers, researchers, and other smart people here - and I don't think those are the ones being jerks.
I'll start (I identify as a math/physics guy):
Take a look at the coronavirus statistics and scroll down below the wall of numbers to the first graph, and note that the function has become linear for the last 5 weeks or so.
If you take 30,000 as the daily coronavirus cases (slope of the linear portion, rough estimate from "Daily New Cases" further into the link) and note that there have been 1.3 million cases so far, this means that at the current rate it will take approximately 10,000 days for coronavirus to infect the US population.
Social Distancing and the shutdown turned the exponential rise into a linear one.
The original two reasons for the shutdown were that A) we weren't prepared, and B) the pandemic threatened to overwhelm our hospital capacity. Well, we're now prepared, and more accurate/recent predictions show that hospitals won't be overloaded. NY and California seem to be the only places at risk, we have two mobile Navy hospitals on standby, and have built overflow hospitals in places where needed. Among many other preparations.
Given the enormous impact of the shutdown, doesn't it make sense to reopen?
Specifically, since social distancing seems to work so well, it makes sense to ease off on some restrictions until the pandemic resumes exponential rise, then moderate the speed of that rise ("flatten the curve") so that hospitals aren't overwhelmed.
The theory being that everyone will be getting the virus anyway, the shutdown is wildly destructive, and the best way to navigate between those two evils is to allow the pandemic to run its course in a way that minimizes the economic damage, but doesn't result in unnecessary deaths due to hospital overflow.
This assumes vaccinations won't be available in time to help.
What insights can you bring to the discussion?
Any economists, medical experts, lawyers, or other smart people want to chip in?
If we back off and manage to a level, no phase 3 (Score:2)
My goal for shutdown was to manage it to near zero, not to just a flat line. I believe it has become a flat line because many backed off starting as early as mid-April. I was seeing a lot more non-compliance as the month continued.
It is quite shocking to see some Americans boldly going maskless in stores, walking the wrong way down one-way aisles as though they should get a badge of honor, and crowding people in checkout lines with 6ft distances clearly marked. It is no different than loading up a dart gun
Sure, let's debate (Score:2)
note that the function has become linear for the last 5 weeks
We seen this for a lot of countries. One explanation, probably not the only one or valid for all cases, is very simple:
The slope is limited by the test capacity - the number of tests available and the amount of labs being able to test.
Ex. If there is a daily test capacity of say, 10000 tests, and you have 1% infection rate across the population, you'd find 1000 cases each day pretty linear.
I'm not saying it's the only explanation, but i do think this effect might blind us or skew statistics, unless carefull