Come May 1st, good luck at keeping people confined for another month.

Marc

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I think the herd immunity concept is very dangerous given the amount of uncertainty regarding this virus.

Put it this way. Let's say a million people in the UK are actually infected right now. This would mean that you have succeeded in keeping it from 98.5% of the population as things stand.

Herd immunity works on the principal that a large % of the population has had it and become immune, therefore protecting the small % who have not had it.

So to get to that, you are going to aim to infect a large amount of the population, even though you currently have 98.5% uninfected... it doesn't make sense. Test, test, test, track, track, track and do not take the uncertain path of infecting the overwhelming majority of the population with a virus that we know very little about.

Fact 1: Christopher Columbus brought old school European viruses to the New World. Six decades later herd immunity had done basically fuck all to protect the virgin immune systems of the native population.

From the pages of Sciencemag.org:

"When the Taino gathered on the shores of San Salvador Island to welcome a small party of foreign sailors on 12 October 1492, they had little idea what lay in store. They laid down their weapons willingly and brought the foreign sailors—Christopher Columbus and his crewmen—tokens of friendship: parrots, bits of cotton thread, and other presents. Columbus later wrote that the Taino 'remained so much our friends that it was a marvel.'

A year later, Columbus built his first town on the nearby island of Hispaniola, where the Taino numbered at least 60,000 and possibly as many as 8 million, according to some estimates. But by 1548, the Taino population there had plummeted to less than 500."

Fact 2: We know of viruses that once you have caught them, stay in you forever, occasionally flaring up. Herpes Zoster is a virus that many catch in the form of Chicken Pox. And the body stores it. And it can hit back in later life as Shingles. Mononucleosis (aka glandular fever/mono) similarly resides in the body. How do we know if we go for the herd immunity strategy that we aren't just setting everyone up for perennial sickness? Why do that when we have a chance to contain this forever and always?

Fact 3: There are reports of people being reinfected, in the same way as the cold or the flu. We don't know for sure that humans can achieve immunity to this virus. Why then consider a need to infect the 98% or whatever it is % of the population?

If we can muster the discipline to stick inside as a species for a month, we kill it once and for all. Incredibly, it seems to be a big if...

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65k people dead worldwide.

Take your pick of a mortality rate, but let's choose a conservative 1.5%.

And let's assume it takes 2 weeks to die of the virus from the date you contract it.

Those assumptions give us more than 4 million people with the virus two weeks ago.

This virus has been underestimated at every turn. For some reason, people see the effects in another country and the response is "well, that won't happen here." Almost to the point of absurdity.

First, we saw hospitals overwhelmed in China; patients in corridors. Ah, but that's over there, that's not the West.

Then we saw it in Italy. Ah, but they have an older population. That's not every country in Europe.

Then we saw it in Spain. Ah, but that's continental Europe. That's not the UK or the US.

Now we are seeing it in the UK and New York.

Ah, but not every state will be the same.

The virus doesn't care where you are. We have seen it behave the same everywhere. It spreads exponentially if not contained. A significant portion of those infected need ventilators or they die. If you cut out human contact, you contain it.

3.5k are dead in New York state alone and that state has not yet peaked.

California appears to have a done a marvellous job of limiting spread via shelter at home. Ditto Illinois. But the response of the various states has been all over the place. And the US is one country, with no barriers currently for crossing state borders.

From the numbers I see, unfortunately, 40k is an inevitability and 100k+ seems very probable.

The flu is not nearly as hard on people, especially those 55+, as COVID is, but the flu death toll this year is much higher (so far).  That's gone ignored, as it usually is every single year.  What's scary to people is that COVID is the big bad unknown, while the flu isn't.

I definitely take this seriously, but I'm not panicking either.  I'm able to work from home, my wife and I do go not out unnecessarily, and, when I do go out (so far only to get groceries), I stay well away from people and use hand sanitizer.  When I got gas to today, I used a plastic bag as a makeshift glove to push the buttons and hold the gas pump handle.  It looked silly, but it worked!

Yes, this is serious stuff, but people are turning it up to 11 here....

Infected: 490,000

Admitted in hospitals: 35,300

Admitted in ICU: 2,500

Deaths: 6,300

And these are the figures of coronavirus in about 1.5 months:

Infected: 130,759

Admitted in hospitals: 58,774

Admitted in ICU: 6,871

Deaths: 12,418

The figures of coronavirus are impressive when compared to those of flu. But the real figures are higher for several reasons: in contrast with flu, a good number of people (dead, in ICUs, in hospitals and let alone with slight symptoms or even asymptomatic) are not diagnosed because there aren't enough tests, and thus are not included in the figures. Also, the figures of coronaviurs (except that of deaths) are not totals, but only current figures, excluding those who have got better.