That depends on what curve you are referring to...
I am speaking of the one that was going to kill over 2 million in the US if we did not kill the economy first..
https://www.cato.org/blog/how-one-model-simulated-22-million-us-deaths-covid-19
I think that one was flattened quite well
Eagler
Eagler I will respond to you before this thread gets closed. I appreciate the respectful conversation, as well.
The issue with how you see the flattened curve is the problem that there isn't one covid-19 virus, there's two. SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, which originated from -1. The original virus, -1, came out of China (
and no, it was not engineered in a lab. We crazy biologists actually know how to check the genetic makeup and can see if they are naturally evolved or engineered) and spread to Europe and the West Coast of the US. The second, -2, mutated in Europe to include a protein that made it easier to infect human cells. That's the primary causal virus of the worst case sickness.... it tends to have a much higher viral shed rate from person to person, and needs less to infect you. -1, you need a pretty significant amount of virus to get infected... think someone sneezing in your face. For -2, if you pass through a doorway that an infected person exhaled at 2 minutes prior, you're likely to be exposed to the ~1,500 virus threshold to get infected.
-2 ended up in New York, while -1 tried really hard everywhere else to do something, but it just didn't have the virulence factor. Speaking evolution, it was weaker. Shutting down New York limited the possibility for -2 to get out, and it didn't, really, until we opened up. That's when it moved out of the northeast and took over as the primary SARS virus, out-competing its' progenitor by orders of magnitude for the right to nestle in our cozy lungs. From what research I've seen, it's the only one now.... nobody seems to find naturally occuring SARS-CoV-1 now.... only 2, with the protein mutation.
Technically, we
bent the curve down, but we really are still only in the first wave. CoV-1 had a pretty free reign on most of the country, but wasn't able to really infect many people, because it wasn't equipped with the same protein. CoV-2 was bottled up in New York, and infected/killed a whole lot of people.... but didn't get out until we relaxed things. We relaxed while that virus still had a sustained reservoir of spread, both symptomatic and asymptomatic. Then it was allowed out during summer, which is generally a poor time for a virus to spread (everyone is outside and we don't tend to be personally close to strangers).... and now you have an unmitigated disaster unfolding, with winter bringing everyone inside again. Immunologists will be studying this for decades. We actually did a pretty good job at the beginning....although it wasn't by design. We isolated the virus that had a higher virulence, while we ignored the other one.... But, that brought our guard down too early.....and now we have the exact case study that your referenced model was portraying: uncontrolled logarithmic spread . I'm not saying we're looking at tens of millions... but I think over a million Americans dead might be baked into the cake right now. I truly hope that doesn't come to pass.... but with the way this country is acting, I am entirely pessimistic.
If you read nothing else, read these next lines. The next few weeks are not going to be good. There are really big warning signs with the healthcare system in this country. I would be cautious to the extreme through January/February, and possibly until the weather breaks, and people aren't all stuck inside and breathing on each other. If you are one of the unlucky people, right now, who get the worst case scenario of full blown COVID-19 requiring a ventilator, you're entering a health care system on the brink of fundamental collapse. The act of being put on a ventilator FOR ANY REASON, puts a human being at a 40% mortality.... and that goes up with a strained healthcare system. The nurses qualified to run a COVID ward have been doing 6 12 hour shifts a week for almost a year. They are burnt out, and they're dropping like flies. Many have had enough. My close friend working in a major hospital can't count how many people she's watched die the same way: gasping for every breath. 3, 4 in one shift at points. That's not fake, and they're all Americans. We should be doing better.
I would truly not be surprised to see 3500 to 4000 deaths per day by Christmas. Per day, every day for a prolonged period of time. We are on the worst possible path, when looking at the rates of
infection:hospitalization:deaths as you can possibly be with a respiratory virus. You absolutely, unequivocally do not want to be going on a ventilator in the next 6-10 weeks. Not that you EVER would.... but really, really not this winter.
Best of luck, to you and yours <S>