So if we wait around for a vaccine we're looking at 18 months mostly cooped up

[conuly]

Which is awful. Of course, other people are suggesting we say "Fuck it, let the geezers die" and just go back to "normal".

This is a terrible idea in many, many ways, but if I know one thing it is that there is no shortage of powerful people who like to promote terrible ideas. If the unthinkable happens and the awful plan ever gets put into place, about how long would it be until everybody was either immune or dead, do you think?

Comments

[8hyenas]

and also everyone who could afford to who'd wait 18 months for a vaccine. so the population it'd burn thru would be the poor and the ... stupid

[conuly]

And the doctors.

[alexseanchai]

Longer than it'd take for me personally to get dead so I don't want to think about it.

What I want to know is, how do all these people think they're immortal and suffering-immune? I've read a few personal accounts of people who got comparatively mild cases. I gotta specify "comparatively" because the unmodified "mild" is woefully misleading! These people do not want to catch this themselves! Why don't they know that?

[lightbird]

I gotta specify "comparatively" because the unmodified "mild" is woefully misleading!

Exactly. Based on accounts by some of the people who've had comparatively "mild" cases, people are still really sick with mild symptoms.

I don't know what some of these people are thinking. Maybe they do think they're immortal and suffering-immune, or maybe they think that they have enough money and power that if they get it they'll be able to buy access to treatment over everyone else.

[elf]

The media is reporting heavily on the chance of death, and reporting the numbers of people who've died. We aren't getting news reports about how many people were admitted to the hospital (and of course, we're not getting the slightest hint of reporting about what that costs), and we're not hearing about things like "chance of permanent lung damage" nor "three weeks in intensive care, unable to walk from bed to bathroom because you can't get enough air for that."

People think the disease is either "you are fairly healthy and you will be fine, just uncomfortable; it'll be like the flu" or "you will keel over dead the moment you're diagnosed."

Reading between the gaps of what's being reported: We don't know how long it lasts. I'm not hearing "for non-critical/mild cases, it's about 2-3 weeks of [symptoms]." I think people are mistaking the "two weeks' quarantine" for "it lasts two weeks" instead of "it takes no more than two weeks to hit."

Looking around: Mild cases seem to last 10-14 days. But I suspect people aren't thinking of quarantine as "2 weeks if you don't have it; a month of isolation if you do."

I get it; the media are trying hard to push "do this or else PEOPLE DIE!!!" but they've forgotten to cover "hey, if people don't die, they can still be pretty damn miserable, so... don't put yourself in that situation either."

(Also, mainstream news seems to assume people are compassionate and care about the health of their families and friends. In some communities, that's a "citation needed" situation; there's a number of people who think "God will protect the devout" so they don't need to take any precautions.)

[siderea]

What I want to know is, how do all these people think they're immortal and suffering-immune? I've read a few personal accounts of people who got comparatively mild cases. I gotta specify "comparatively" because the unmodified "mild" is woefully misleading! These people do not want to catch this themselves! Why don't they know that?

Social privilege is a hell of a drug.

Seriously. The young and temporarily able-bodied have been using "but it only really is dangerous to old people and immunocompromised, right?" since the get-go to re-affirm to themselves that they're safe, they're not a poor unfortunate cripple or old. People are literally using their own ableism and ageism to self-medicate away their sense of threat from COVID-19.

(And now that the word's gotten out about the racial disparities, the white and Asian people can use racism, too.)

This trick doesn't work if one admits to consciousness that "less likely" doesn't mean "not likely" or that getting unpleasantly sick (and not just dying) is also a threat. One can only use one's prejudices to make oneself feel safe from COVID-19 if one imagines it a much simpler threat than it is, so if one is bent on doing this, one winds up emotionally pre-committed to the idea that mild cases are a cake walk, it does no lasting damage, and only those one is prejudiced against are likely to get it.

(Hmmmm. This is suggesting an interesting psychology experiment....)

[elf]

From what I hear from the Serious Science side of things: Getting it should confer immunity; that's just how coronaviruses work. (And possibly viruses in general. If you recovered, it was presumably because you made antibodies that worked; they'll continue to work.) What's not clear is how long it takes to truly get over it, and whether the tests are prone to false negatives.

Also not clear: how long the immunity will last and whether it's total immunity or just a strong resistance.

Even more fun: Getting the "common cold" gives you immunity... from that strain. There are over 400 strains of "the common cold." Right now, as far as we know, there's one strain of COVID-19. But if it mutates, immunities may not transfer. Figuring out the likelihood there involves wading through both serious science articles and tons of med-flavored clickbait, and since I am not a serious med-science person, I'm not going to bother with the details.

[shadowkat]

Yep, at least 18 months. OR they could figure out how to do more accurate testing, like China and South Korea did -- which allowed them to open up above and what Iceland is doing.

The trick is to know who has it and who doesn't. And also who is asymptomatic, who has had it and recovered, and whether anyone is immune - been exposed but not come down with it. Test the antibodies - and create a vaccine.

[isis]

Test/Trace/Isolate is really what we need, yep. Likely to get more and faster testing before a vaccine, but the scale of testing the US needs is gonna be tough.

[lavendertook]

I knew back in February that we'd need to do this for at least a year and a half for there to be time to develop and do trials for a vaccine, or not do it at all. But we have liars, profiteers eugenicists/mass murderers for leaders who will not do anything for the public good unless forced in trade or violence. We've gotten what trade will produce so far.

[alexseanchai]

not sure that's true. tweet thread from someone who works at a UK manufacturer that's pretty sickening to read. tl;dr when UK gov't asked manufacturers to make more ventilators, this company tried, and UK gov't did not actually want any.

[sixbeforelunch]

IDK, but I'm sure not planning on going back to "normal" life until there's a vaccine. I'm scared that I'm going to be forced to go back into the office too soon, and if that happens, I will have no choice but to go, but I'm certainly not going back to my usual shopping/eating out/socializing routines.

Do these people think that just because they declare the lockdown over, everyone will suddenly start going back to the stores and restaurants? I mean, some percentage of people will, but a good amount are going to continue to stay away no matter what, so it's not like the economy is just going to bounce right back to where it was.

[lightbird]

Yeah, until we have a vaccine there is always going to be the risk of this thing spiking out of control, and there are really smart, knowledgeable people working on this and trying to come up with a vaccine as quickly as possible, but realistically it's not going to be ready before 2021 and rolling it out is going to take time.

And, I mean, even if it is just older people that are dying from this "fuck it, let the geezers die" would be a terrible, terrible idea in so many ways. But it isn't just older people who are getting very sick, it isn't just older people the virus is killing.

Ugh, it really is awful, and made worse by the fact that we have such awful, monstrous people at the helm who want people to die.

[hilarita]

If we all mask up and have a massive test and contact tracing program, then we can relax the lock down somewhat. That won't be enough for the most seriously at risk - they'll need to stay at home until there's a vaccine. And 18 months to 24 months would be pretty bloody speedy for that.

If you go down the whole "let them bloody die" route, I've no idea. Perhaps 6 months, provided you're OK with shovelling people into mass graves, plus a whole lot more associated deaths just caused by the fact that you've killed off a lot of your physicians (and other hospital staff). And you're OK with losing a lot of your working population (i.e. your cooks and cleaners and other "minions for posh people") either to death or to long-term or medium-term sickness, when it turns out that your lungs are deeply fucked up.

But that only works if there's no or very little reinfection. Otherwise, we just have rounds of death every 4-6 months (or whatever) when the immunity wears off.

But that relies on countries like the UK and US sorting out mask supply problems, and setting up a massive test and tracing program. (Preferably in a way that doesn't destroy privacy forever. There are legitimate concerns now, but there won't be forever.)

I'm assuming that with mild-moderate asthma, I want to stay at home if at all possible until there's a vaccine, because I'd like my lungs to keep on working as well as possible for as long as possible.

[melannen]

I'm not sure why nobody's talking about the possibility of a treatment (I guess the quinine debacle has shut a lot of that down, sadly?) but I think there's a reasonable chance we'll find an effective antiviral before a vaccine makes it through testing. Especially since it's increasingly likely this virus won't make a great vaccine. (It'll help! But it won't stop it.)

Otherwise... yeah. Fast serology testing will help a lot, I think.

[lightbird]

I agree that there's more hope for getting an effective antiviral sooner than getting a vaccine.

From what I have read quinine may be helpful, but they just don't know for sure. There's been some indication of it but they need more evidence and more testing. Unfortunately Trump as usual just went ahead with it and pushed it despite the experts clarifying that it's a 'maybe' not a 'certainty' and that they need to do much more testing before they definitively declare it as an effective treatment.

quick guess based on only math and uncorroborated numbers

[starandrea]

Assuming 500,000 current coronavirus cases in the US, which is total identified cases minus deaths and recoveries (worldometers), and a US population of 328,000,000, we would only need 10 doublings to infect the entire population.

Further assuming a consistent doubling time of 6 days, suggested by current death rates (Our World in Data), we could infect everyone in the country in two months.

We could figure herd immunity helps decrease the doubling time at 60%, but that only takes off about a week with exponential growth, and we should probably add at least a month for the last people to develop symptoms and recover or die, making the total duration longer rather than shorter.

So maybe three months for the virus to run its course in the US if everyone just threw up their hands and ignored it.

ETA: To clarify, I'm not advocating this possibility in any way. I'm against it. I was just mathematically curious about the question, "If the unthinkable happens... how long?"

Re: quick guess based on only math and uncorroborated numbers

[elf]

I don't know if we'll get a doubling in 6 days, but there are several churches (in at least 8 states) that insisted on holding Easter services in person, so... gonna see more cases, especially in areas that don't have the funds and resources to do extensive testing.

[dewline]

I'm not interested in sacrificing my elder relatives to this. Yes, "Nothing is won without sacrifice", thank you Leslie Charteris and Norman Kent for that one. But this is a plan I am willing to go without.

[conuly]

Me neither. I do like my mother, and love her as well.

Also my nieces.

And myself.

Got some asthma in the family.

I just want to run through the numbers out of a perverse, dispassionate interest.

[l33tminion]

about how long would it be until everybody was either immune or dead

Well, we're on the order of 500k active cases in the US now, which is about eight doublings from saturation. (The exact value of saturation doesn't matter that much because very low estimations of saturation are only one or two doubling from 100% and saturation is definitely less than 100%. So getting that wrong is just plus or minus a few days.)

Doubling time on the epidemic in the "YOLO business as usual into catastrophe" strategy is about 2-5 days. Ad hoc social distancing without any government support probably isn't sustainable enough to change it that much. Immunity doesn't slow things down in that scenario because with uncontrolled growth, recovered case numbers are dominated by current case numbers, and new immunity is much slower than new infections. It goes from "a few percent have it (and fewer percent have ever had it)" to "approximately everyone has it now" in about a week.

So about a month, maybe two. If getting to that strategy later (without improvements on non-lockdown mitigation strategies), add a few days for each time the level of current infections has been halved. Preaching to the choir, but it's an unimaginably bad idea that leaves millions dead, approximately everyone traumatized, the healthcare sector collapsed (with fairly high long-term damage), and the economy destroyed anyways.

[bibliofile]

AIUI a vaccine would be great, but in the meantime we need LOTS of fast testing, plus contact tracing. If only someone was on that.

[conuly]

Someone is on that. That person is not Uncle Sam.

[conuly]

You don't understand exponential growth, do you? Have I told you about the invasive weed in the lake yet?

Picture a pristine lake. In the lake there is an invasive plant. This plant doubles in size every day. 40 days from today, the plant will cover the entire lake. On what day will the plant cover half the lake?

The answer is pretty simple: Day 39.

Here's the trickier question. I say "trickier", it really only requires halving and halving again. How many days did it take for the plant to cover 1% of the lake? It took 40 days to cover 100% of the lake, and 39 days to cover 50% of the lake, so how long did it take to cover just 1% of the lake?

The answer is 33. For one month the plant was so insignificant you could hardly see it, and then a week later it was, quite literally, everywhere.

If one person spreads it to three people, and it took 3 months to infect 10% of the population, then, if nothing changes, it will take nowhere near 30 months to infect everybody.

[mordorbot]

There's no good ideas either though. Like, "let things go back to normal" implies the virus will agree with the plan.

[rmc28]

My stepfather says the 1918 flu, in which his great-aunt died in her early 30s, lasted about 18 months before everyone was either dead or immune.

[thewayne]

One of the sailors from the Teddy Roosevelt died. Somehow I doubt he was a geezer, or as Bill O'Reilly put it, at the end of his rope.

[pwcorgigirl]

Being a geezer in a houseful of geezers, I'm kind of invested in the idea of living and not leaving my 29 year old kid with Asperger's syndrome alone in the world.

Although I can't help but think that the amoral folks in our government figure if all us baby boomers due to retire in the next decade kicked the bucket now, it would take care of any worries about the looming shortfall in the Social Security system. This is sarcasm, of course, with a side order of my disgust at how things are going in our country.

[conuly]

Our government is made up of boomers, though. You'd think they'd have some sense of self-preservation.

[silveradept]

Not long. That assumes that this virus doesn't mutate swiftly enough that being immune to one strain means you've got six more to get infected by, which is a possible runaway situation, at which point everyone elects Seanan McGuire ruler of the world until we stop living in a Mira Grant novel.

Article that it is already everywhere

[agoodwinsmith]

I would be interested in your and other people's perspective about this article and its reasoning. It feels accurate to me, but I am an anxious fearful person.

https://medium.com/@ali_razavian/covid-19-from-a-data-scientists-perspective-95bd4e84843b

[saraqael]

For all the people out there saying, 'let the geezers die...' My sister is a nurse in a DC hospital. She told me that this week she'd seen an otherwise healthy, 37 year old male with no underlying health conditions die from this virus before he could even be put on a ventilator. He's hardly the first young adult to die from this. It's not just killing old people. I wish people would educate themselves and stop being so cavalier about this horrible virus.

As for how long before everyone is immune or dead... no one actually knows. Right now, no one even knows how long the people who've survived it will remain immune because this virus is completely new, and the world is still so early on in the pandemic that there hasn't been time to do any longitudinal studies. For lots of viruses, immunity lasts less than a year. There are already reports of recovered patients being reinfected, but again, because this is so new, no one is really sure if they were actually reinfected, or if they were deemed recovered before they actually were (they may have still had active but low viral load in their systems).

The best path forward until a vaccine is ready, is to continue stay at home for a few more weeks to stem further infections as much as possible, then implement strict testing of everyone in the community, combined with strict, thorough contact tracing for anyone found to be infected. Workplaces should do what China did when they started to reopen their economy: daily monitoring of employees, social distancing in the workplace, wearing masks at work, and very strict hygiene rules at work.

Here in the US, we're nowhere near ready to do any of this. We still can't even get proper masks and protective gear for healthcare workers. We'll get there, but I think it will still take until the end of summer/early fall at least.