https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCnT2owc1Z8
Work on epidemiology leads him to believe virus will be tamed much as other viruses. Ordinary social factors tend to calm outbreaks, he says. Geometric or exponential mortality rates are unlikely, he believes.
Conant comments:
More people died after 9/11 as a result of traveling by auto than they would have had they flown. That is because the highway death rate is far higher than the air travel death rate. So the extreme measure of avoiding air travel was the cure that was worse than the ailment.
America faces a similar scenario with respect to the Covid-19 virus. The widespread social-distancing measures are crashing the economy, which works on human interaction. The question is: will the dire economic consequences bring about more deaths than the actual virus? That certainly seems a plausible eventuality. Of course, it is hard to say what is prudent behavior and what is excessive, especially in light of the Imperial College study that asserts that the usual measures won't work for this virus.
Yet, in China and elsewhere we do see a leveling off in contagion, implying that the virus is controllable or peters out in the same way as do flu bugs. In any case, we need to learn more about the efficacy and availability of the Japanese flu drug that Chinese doctors say has been effective against Covid-19.
March 19, 2020: New information released, as I was writing this post, from the CDC shows that of the 508 patients known to have been hospitalized in the United States for Covid-19, about 20 percent of those were ages 20 to 44 and another 18 percent were between the ages of 45 and 54. If the data are accurate, we might have a different situation, though it still remains true that it is rare for a non-senior to die of the disease. Those figures do not show which hospital admissions were precautionary and which were urgent.
More people died after 9/11 as a result of traveling by auto than they would have had they flown. That is because the highway death rate is far higher than the air travel death rate. So the extreme measure of avoiding air travel was the cure that was worse than the ailment.
America faces a similar scenario with respect to the Covid-19 virus. The widespread social-distancing measures are crashing the economy, which works on human interaction. The question is: will the dire economic consequences bring about more deaths than the actual virus? That certainly seems a plausible eventuality. Of course, it is hard to say what is prudent behavior and what is excessive, especially in light of the Imperial College study that asserts that the usual measures won't work for this virus.
Yet, in China and elsewhere we do see a leveling off in contagion, implying that the virus is controllable or peters out in the same way as do flu bugs. In any case, we need to learn more about the efficacy and availability of the Japanese flu drug that Chinese doctors say has been effective against Covid-19.
The fact that the CDC found that staff members helped spread the pathogen that killed Washington nursing home residents illustrates the issue. The relatively healthy staff workers did not feel ill enough to stay home. People go to work with the sniffles all the time. Apparently none of the younger people even needed hospital care. It was only the elderly with severely compromised immune systems who were marked by the Grim Reaper.
As long as older people are aware of the risk of infection, they are likely to self-regulate and steer clear of crowds. Younger people have no such need. The primary reason for controlling the movements of the non-elderly is to prevent them from contaminating the elderly. So rather than forcing everyone to freeze in place, it might make more sense to simply advise the elderly (anyone over 60?) to practice social distancing. If they decline to follow that advice, then they interact with others at their own risk.
No comments:
Post a Comment