anotherparent posted:I wasn't being facetious at all, I was being completely serious. I am not an epidemiologist. But, what we are waiting for is rapid virus and antibody tests that can be easily given to lots and lots of people. Supposedly they have those ready now, and are testing them.
Rapid antibody tests will tell us how many people actually have had the virus and now have antibodies. Once the epidemiologists have a sense of that (it is certainly many more people than have thus-far been tested positive), they will know how rapidly the virus will spread once we are let back out.
When we have rapid and readily available virus tests, they'll be able to test people with symptoms immediately, and isolate them immediately. The point is to be able to quickly contain outbreaks when they happen again, rather than letting people wander around for weeks infecting others.
The third thing is that if people are getting sick at a lower rate, they won't overwhelm the medical system. 80% of people who get this (or probably more than that) don't need hospitalization at all. 20% of the 327 million do, that's 65 million. 7% may need ventilators, that's 23 million. There are around 160,000 ventilators in the US (? quick google). That's why it is critical to spread the numbers out.
All of that is why this is not like the flu. Flu viruses have been around for decades or centuries, and a part of the population has built immunity to them. So, not everyone gets them anyway, H1N1 case in point. That was true even before flu vaccines. COVID-19 is new, so no-one has immunity at all.
Interesting analysis. If I understand this, we need to get 23 million people through the medical care system 160k at a time before this is over. If these ventilators are needed for 2 weeks per patient, each one can be used by 24 patients over the course of a year, so we can treat 3.8 million people per year... so 6 years for this to play out? So we stay closed for 6 years?