03-17-2020, 10:21 AM
knieft - social distancing is to avoid crushing the medical infrastructure during peak death time, so more folks can avoid fatality.
All NPIs (non pharmaceutical interventions like hand-washing, social distancing, etc) are to slow the spread of the infection. This both allows for less critical cases to end up in the hospital at once and overwhelm it, as well as developing better treatments and therapies over time. By flattening the curve it gives a chance for doctors to work out best treatment regiments, various therapeutics to be tested, and on a long enough time frame, a vaccine to be found (all of which are much harder to do when many people are dying at once).
If a vaccine is found, or if the virus mutates to a much less contagious form like was seen with the Spanish flu, not everybody need be infected.
most everyone is exposed during, say, a normal flu season. How are infection rates gathered?
Not everyone catches the flu each season. Seasonal flu rates are gathered as part of the Influenza like illness (ILI) Surveillance network that randomly tests samples from physicians around the country and then models out what those numbers may mean in the wider population.
https://health.hawaii.gov/docd/about-us/...e-program/
Are the unknown percentage of folks have no major symptoms assumed NOT to be infected? If they were infected and their immune system took care of it to the point of testing negative, never having a symptom--is that person considered never infected?
Depends on how you are testing - South Korea is randomly sampling their population regardless of symptoms and are finding that the vast majority of cases are in the younger individuals, although they are often symptom free. That allows them to act as "Typhoid Marys" who unknowingly spread the virus to others more at risk.
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/12...2978343937 (see chart)
Given the urgency of the situation, there are few people concerned about counting the infected, but not ill, totals. In the future (should there be one
researchers may be able to test for antibodies to find those that fought off the virus without even realizing it.
(I don't want to die, don't want my loved ones to die).
Regardless of motivation, the outcome is the same, which is the important part.
what's needed to scare enough folks into social distancing for it to make a significant difference. It appears to be working so far.
If people don't take it seriously, they invite the worse outcomes. If people take it seriously, there is a better chance of never seeing the worse outcomes and people naysaying the predictions.
Those in public health are willing to appear to be wrong in the end, instead of gambling millions of lives to see if their predictions were right.
All NPIs (non pharmaceutical interventions like hand-washing, social distancing, etc) are to slow the spread of the infection. This both allows for less critical cases to end up in the hospital at once and overwhelm it, as well as developing better treatments and therapies over time. By flattening the curve it gives a chance for doctors to work out best treatment regiments, various therapeutics to be tested, and on a long enough time frame, a vaccine to be found (all of which are much harder to do when many people are dying at once).
If a vaccine is found, or if the virus mutates to a much less contagious form like was seen with the Spanish flu, not everybody need be infected.
most everyone is exposed during, say, a normal flu season. How are infection rates gathered?
Not everyone catches the flu each season. Seasonal flu rates are gathered as part of the Influenza like illness (ILI) Surveillance network that randomly tests samples from physicians around the country and then models out what those numbers may mean in the wider population.
https://health.hawaii.gov/docd/about-us/...e-program/
Are the unknown percentage of folks have no major symptoms assumed NOT to be infected? If they were infected and their immune system took care of it to the point of testing negative, never having a symptom--is that person considered never infected?
Depends on how you are testing - South Korea is randomly sampling their population regardless of symptoms and are finding that the vast majority of cases are in the younger individuals, although they are often symptom free. That allows them to act as "Typhoid Marys" who unknowingly spread the virus to others more at risk.
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/12...2978343937 (see chart)
Given the urgency of the situation, there are few people concerned about counting the infected, but not ill, totals. In the future (should there be one
researchers may be able to test for antibodies to find those that fought off the virus without even realizing it.(I don't want to die, don't want my loved ones to die).
Regardless of motivation, the outcome is the same, which is the important part.
what's needed to scare enough folks into social distancing for it to make a significant difference. It appears to be working so far.
If people don't take it seriously, they invite the worse outcomes. If people take it seriously, there is a better chance of never seeing the worse outcomes and people naysaying the predictions.
Those in public health are willing to appear to be wrong in the end, instead of gambling millions of lives to see if their predictions were right.