COVID-19 Predictions
There has been a great deal of confusion over the mortality, infection and other statistical measures of the spread and fatality of the most recent coronavirus, COVID-19. There are three possible scenarios for what will happen with the disease:
Outcome 1: The outbreak never ends. According to researchers at the World Health Organization (WHO), an average person with the new coronavirus passes it to 2.0 to 2.5 other people. If this continues, the virus may become endemic. Four other coronaviruses are endemic — meaning permanently present — in the global population. They all cause common colds, though each can cause pneumonia and death in rare instances. Because these human coronaviruses are so mild, they don’t have names beyond their four-character designations: OC43, 229E, HKU1, and NL63.
Outcome 1a: It will fluctuate seasonally (like the flu). The flu is seasonal because cooler temperatures help harden its capsid, a protective gel-like coating, that surrounds the virus while it’s in the air. A stronger shell ensures it can survive long enough in the air to travel from one person to the next.
Outcome 2: With the help of public-health interventions, the coronavirus plays itself out. There are two major models that explain how the pandemic can play out, the second a marginally better outcome for the human race than the first.
Outcome 2a: This is what health officials are trying to prevent by instituting “shelter in place” protocols, social distancing, and mandating that non-essential businesses close down. In this scenario, people continue their daily lives, carrying the coronavirus (while they are still asymptomatic) and unknowingly infect many others. This spreads and there are too many patients with the virus, overloading hospitals. The infrastructure can’t support such a large influx of patients, so many who have more sever cases can’t get treatment, and many preventable deaths occur.
Outcome 2b: In this outcome, the policies that authorities have instituted succsesfully “flatten the curve,” and even though many are still infected by the disease, they do not verload the infrastructure, so severe cases are treated, decreasing the number of preventable death. The disease cannot travel as easily from person to person because there are fewer people moving around that can catch the virus.
Outcome 3: Drug companies manufacture a vaccine. The development of a vaccine is essential if we want to control the virus, many scientists say. Francis Collins, the Director of the NIH, estimates that although researchers are working at an unprecedented rate, it will likely take around 18 months for a vaccine to be developed.
Here are some things to keep in mind about the virus’s statistics:
The number of people actually infected is likely underreported, as the symptoms can easily be mistaken for the flu/common cold. And even if people do get it, they might know how they got it, which causes a problem for government’s trying to determine Patient Zero in their nation/region. Additionally, in China, there are many who are afraid of getting caught in its labyrinthine hospital system, which is overrun and unprepared, so they stay home until symptoms improve. These numbers are not included in mortality rates (#people dead/#people infected).
And although the statistics don’t always reflect reality (see How Not to Be Wrong by J. Ellenberg), they can be used somewhat gingerly, to determine the likelihood of infection. If patient zero can be found, then doctors will be able to quarantine many others infected by that person. If the same number of cases can be found in areas of differing populations, then the impact of that many cases is relatively minimal for the larger population. There is also a smaller chance that many others (percentage wise) in the larger city will be infected, even if those infected are not quarantined (those people will come into contact with a smaller percentage of the overall population).
Different demographics are all differently affected by the Coronavirus, especially depending on one’s age and affluence. For example, most children are to be only mildly affected, while infants and the elderly are at particular risk.
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