Nobel winner predicts caseswill begin tapering off soon

Vaccine breakthrough held likely after mutation news

A Nobel laureate biophysicist predicts that the Covid-19 epidemic in America and across the globe will level off much sooner than expected, The Los Angeles Times is reporting.

LA Times report
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate

The newspaper today reported

Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of Covid-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted.

Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world.

While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don’t support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place.

“What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.”

Levitt noticed that in China on Jan. 31, the country had 46 new deaths due to the novel coronavirus, compared with 42 new deaths the day before. That represents a sudden reduction in the rate of new infections. No longer were cases piling up exponentially.

“This suggests that the rate of increase in the number of deaths will slow down even more over the next week,” Levitt wrote in a report he sent to friends Feb. 1 that was widely shared on Chinese social media. And soon, he predicted, the number of deaths would be decreasing every day.

Though American statistics are "still noisy," he predicts the social distancing measures will soon bear fruit.

Meanwhile, Marc Siegel, MD, a professor at New York University School of Medicine and media personality, said that new research shows that the Sars-CoV virus, which triggers the disease of Covid-19, is not mutating rapidly, meaning that various vaccines under development have a better chance of working. He noted that one vaccine is already in clinical trials, making him optimistic of an effective prevention measure that could reduce the contagion quite soon.

Earlier yesterday Siegel said that New York City is now "another Wuhan."

Siegel has written two popular books on potential pandemics.

Prodded by a newswoman, Siegel said that Scripps Research had disproved a rumor that the Sars-CoV virus had been genetically engineered in the Wuhan virology lab. It should be noted that there were initial concerns that a military laboratory, some 600 miles from Wuhan, might have been the source of the pathogen. But Chinese medics reported that they thought the virus had escaped the Wuhan virology lab after an accident in which a worker was bitten by a potentially infected bat. Coronaviruses tend to infect bats, it has been reported.

Scripps reports that it is examining a large number of drugs, using a new computerized technique, that might be repurposed to fight Sars-CoV.

Scripps Research report on Covid-19 work
https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2020/20200318-covid19-scripps-research.html

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Conant comments
The Chinese infection curve flattened once officials imposed highly authoritarian measures to keep people indoors. People received food in plastic bags delivered by government trucks.

But no such measure has been imposed on New York City -- "the new Wuhan" -- where people are crammed into small dwellings and get cabin fever rather easily, and where they disregard social distancing appeals with a free and easy attitude.

It may be necessary to patrol the streets with National Guard troops and/or auxiliary police issuing tickets for social distancing lapses.

Let's hope a good antiviral combo and/or vaccine is deployed rather soon.

The morgues in New York City are reportedly full up.