General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCOVID 19 is not "just" the flu - please educate yourselves
The report that convinced Trump
American officials said the report, which projected up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States from such a spread, also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures to isolate members of the public.
Imperial College has advised the government on its response to previous epidemics, including SARS, avian flu and swine flu. With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-imperial-college-johnson.html
March 2020.
In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour, we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months (Figure 1A). In such scenarios, given an estimated R0 of 2.4, we predict 81% of the GB and US populations would be infected over the course of the epidemic. Epidemic timings are approximate given the limitations of surveillance data in both countries: The epidemic is predicted to be broader in the US than in GB and to peak slightly later. This is due to the larger geographic scale of the US, resulting in more distinct localised epidemics across states (Figure 1B) than seen across GB. The higher peak in mortality in GB 16 March is due to the smaller size of the country and its older population compared with the US. In total, in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB and 2.2 million in the US, not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality.
For an uncontrolled epidemic, we predict critical care bed capacity would be exceeded as early as the second week in April, with an eventual peak in ICU or critical care bed demand that is over 30 times greater than the maximum supply in both countries.
Link to the full report:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Educate yourselves, folks. I have been fighting this battle since mid-January - and I have 6 multiple family members at risk. I am too damn tired from fighting that battle with right wingers, until their fearless leader was informed of the projections from the Imperial College of London and finally gave them permission to treat it seriously.
I have less than no patience now that the same crap is popping up here in multiple threads
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)People were looking at me like I had a third eye in mid February.
Ms. Toad
(33,915 posts)for suggesting that we needed to at least be proactive enough to post signs advising students (and faculty and administration) about disease prevention (social distancing, minimizing hand shakes, handwashing, avoiding large gatherings, etc.)
I was told:
It's less deadly than the flu
We shouldn't have to tell adults to wash their hands
We don't have the right holders to post signs yet
When I explained the risk to them and that I'd been tracking it since mid-January - , their response was (1) you're just worrried because you have a daughter at high risk, the rest of us are OK and (2) How do you know all of this stuff (in response to me countering every myth they threw at me).
Then on Tuesday classes were cancelled on 75 minutes' notice. on Monday this week, all non-essential personnel were ordered to work from home.
crickets
(25,896 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,039 posts)Ms. Toad
(33,915 posts)The R0 determines how many people each person is expected to infect. (So an R0 of 3.2 means each infected person will infect about 3.2 people).
The incubation period is the length of time from infection to displaing symptoms.
Part of the incubation period, the person is infectious (so they are starting to infect some of their 3.2 people)
So the doubling time is a relatively complex model based on how infectious a disease is, how long they are contatious (part of the incubation + part of the disease length), how well infected people are isolating themselves, etc.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,039 posts)It just jumped out at me that incubation period and doubling time were nearly the same, and I thought maybe it was a rough rule of thumb for infectious diseases. That would leave out R0, though.
Dangit! There oughta be a law making things simple. And round pi off to 3.0, too.