A different way of looking at it from the same sight.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/antibody-study-suggests-coronavirus-is-far-more-widespread-than-previously-thought
One of the key parts.
So now consider that if far more people.
1. The possibility to contain it becomes impossible.
2. The odds of creating a vaccination soon enough to have a significant impact on most of the population is small.
3. All we are doing is possibly slowing the spread, but in the end we will still have to reach heard immunity.
4. The 2 = 3% number is in a non crisis area. If you do New York State with the same numbers working backwards from the death rate.
NY State had 14,828 deaths. With a 0.12% - 0.20 death rate that works out to about to between 11.7 to million 7 people. So NY State has approximately 20 million. so between 35% and 58% of the people would have all ready been infected. Those numbers are approaching herd immunity, And could possibly be a major reason the new infection rate is dropping.
So now is it better to try isolate every one , or try to just isolate the high risk population?
HITech
I agree that all measures seem targeted at slowing stuff down to enable the various health services to cope.
In the UK this has three facets.
1)Social distancing... we still go out for "essential" stuff.
2)Lock down..... we are "locked down" but as per above go out for essential stuff when we exercise social distancing.
3)Isolation...my son is diabetic..... my mother is 94 both are under so called isolation...
.ie full lock down for 12 weeks. My mother still went to the local clinic for her beta injections.
Whilst also reducing the load on our health service, only isolation protects the individual in a direct manner. Lockdown and social distancing IMO are about containing spread.
Clearly "efficient" voluntary social distancing may be sufficient but the evidence is that, in the west, its not possible to obtain unless enforced by a form of lockdown.
Boffins in the UK tell us herd immunity would only be reached when (depending upon source) 70-90% of the population are immune. Herd immunity is defined thru an "acceptable" level of deaths...the actual value of "acceptable" in this case is not often discussed. At the present rate of contagion even given the masses of unregistered infections natural herd immunity is considered to be unachievable unless re enforced by vaccine...
. particularly from those defining it by the higher percentile. But the common thought is that this (with help from vaccine) is upto 12months away.
Herd immunity is a political mine field and now considered an unacceptable dialogue , yet clearly (even if given another name) it has to be the end goal. If/when life returns to some level of normality it will be because COVID 19 is considered to be at an "acceptable" (tolerable?) level.
So what is an acceptable death rate for COVID19?
It's widely considered that the UK lockdown/social distancing has now flattening the curve which is going through its peak. We are at ~20,000 deaths (adding unregistered care home deaths to the hospital stats) and we can pretty much see that the tail of the curve will have twice the volume of the head. That would equate to 60,000 deaths (20k+40K) assuming that all these measures stayed in place.... with the prospect that we would still not reach herd immunity.
Our yearly flu death rate varies between 12,000 -20,000
.we have herd immunity for types A&B flu. The view is that that COVID19 will not go away and every year, whilst it will cull some of the flu numbers (and vice versa) its looking like it could be adding ~ 10,000 to those numbers every year. that with a population of some 66M
Face masks...
.. if someone is infectious, then wearing a face mask will protect those not infected...
.. to some degree. Wearing one to avoid infection seems to be less effective.
Social distancing...
. clearly avoiding human contact reduces risk.....more avoidance = less risk
