Interesting coronavirus article
theDirkDiggler
Illinois
Finally some real data. So this little town in Italy called Vo forced every resident to get tested after the town recorded the first death from COVID_19 (and the very first death in Italy) and found that about 3% of the town was infected or 88 residents. About half of those cases were asymptomatic. Anyway, all positive cases were isolated for two weeks and then retested, and every negative case was also retested. The 88 positives were reduced to 7 and they were further isolated and the city reopened.
I wish the article had stated if there were any more deaths besides the first one, a 77 year old. If it was just the one than the death rate would have been about 1%. I would reasonably assume that all the asymptomatic cases recovered and survived.
Now this experiment, unfortunately, can't be duplicated everywhere. There just aren't enough tests and manpower available to administer them to everyone. It seems that lockdown/quarantine without isolation would only delay the spread of the virus since the asymptomatic infected would just keep on reinfecting the uninfected so at the end of the lockdown/quarantine you might just have even more people infected than you started out with. This is a serious point. If every single person on that stupid cruise ship had just gotten tested regardless of symptoms they could have just isolated the positives and retested in 14 days and let all the remaining negatives go. And the remaining positives (about 8% left of the initial positives) would either be held another two weeks and then released if negative or just released to isolation at that point. The first scenario probably works out better. Now there are some tests which bring results in a few hours and some that take as long as 4-5 days. Obviously, the shorter tests would be better.
So the initial infection rate was about 3% of the city. Without individual isolation, it could have gotten much higher than that. Maybe 30%? So instead of 88 cases, there might have been 900 cases of which half are still asymptomatic. Another large amount would be mild. Most countries are only testing people if they have more than mild symptoms which defeats the point of testing to slow the spread of the virus. Basically, they're only testing to admit them to a hospital and care for them. At this point, it might be better just to do the whole herd immunity thing. That's basically what's going on in most of the world. But at this point, i think 1% infection is a very conservative estimate 2 months after introduction. So if you just consider the areas currently highly affected that would be about 15 to 30 million cases right now out of 1.5 billion to 3 billion people. Which means that the overall fatality rate is similar or even lower overall to the flu (more severe flu seasons) despite the much higher risks to the elderly and/or unhealthy which are also probably overblown, since many of that group are often asymptomatic or mildly so. I mean no young child has supposedly died yet despite many of them having pre-existing health conditions. Just think about it. There are about 8k deaths now after 2-3 months. That figure won't jump to millions in the next several months. My guess is it doesn't jump to even hundreds of thousands with or without mitigation efforts. Now the big thing is that if the severe cases aren't able to receive supportive care (not actual treatment), then this figure could skyrocket. That is the biggest issue really and what we are really should be trying to avoid rather than preventing infection which at this point is all but impossible or reasonable.
So if widespread testing isn't being done, all this lockdown and severe mitigation attempts really are likely just increasing the local infection rates to further infect the larger public once they end. Maybe it would be better just to assume you have it and wear masks virtually 24/7 to prevent spreading it . Oh i forgot, there aren't enough masks either...
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After re-testing, this village found a few still having the virus. This is interesting.
I was gonna say if the whole world sat on their couches for 2 weeks - this china virus would die wherever it is. But did not consider virus could survive beyond 2 weeks in living beings.
Consider Bill Ackman's call for 1 month extended spring break. This would reduce residual to a tiny amount - since we have 4 weeks of isolation, not 2. But after the extended spring break is over - this tiny population can still spread it.
But by that time - a vaccine may come out and summer would be in. And better testing methods may come out. Plus more masks in the market. And china virus becomes more like any other cold virus.
I don't see Toilet Paper becoming available anytime soon - you may have already watched this viral 20 second clip - funny and sad at the same time:
https://boingboing.net/2020/03/17/watch-…
Now South Korea has been isolating/mitigating for close to two months now, so their infected rate is probably lower than the average high case country. The same with Japan which has yet to have 1,000 confirmed cases, but they're probably still harboring closer to a million cases if even .5% of their residents are still infected. China has supposedly eradicated the disease inside the country with all new cases being from people coming back into the country. But they've been in much more severe lock down for longer, about 3 months now.
TL-DR, the overall death rate will certainly go down (although probably not quite as low as 1 in a 1,000 cases) as more widespread testing is done, and that's despite the quite high rate of the elderly dying from the disease. However, as treatments hopefully improve (chloroquine, remdesivir), that rate also goes down.
Japan on the other hand was much more conservative when they discovered their first three cases in a period of few days toward the end of January. They started containment measures right away, being concerned about the upcoming Olympics. They still have yet to do widespread testing, probably to keep their overall numbers low, while still doing the lock down.
So containment after 4 weeks is definitely possible at least at the state level, provided that widespread testing is done. But my original point still stands. The disease is way more prevalent than most people think, and without widespread testing and effective isolation, these mitigation/lock down measures might just be overreaction with disappointing results. Of course being only a few days into the lock down, many things can rapidly change over the next few weeks, or days even...