March 18, 2020
I’m going to ask you to engage your brain for a bit. This summarizes information important to your understanding of factors impacting the future course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Links to the sources of information I used follow.
The new coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is of the same class of virus that causes the common cold. Viruses also cause the flu. Why is Covid-19 a significantly greater threat and what ultimately will allow life to return to normal?
New strains of flu virus are discovered every year. Some people contract them. Some die. Most recover. The process of creating a vaccine for new virus strains begins when discovered, and, once tested and validated which can take a year or more, are incorporated into the next season’s ‘flu shot’ many of us get each year.
You may have heard the term ‘herd immunity’ – meaning the relative level of immunity in a particular population. When more people are immune to a particular virus, fewer people contract the disease and therefore there are fewer contagious people at any point in time to pass the disease to others. How much of a population needs to be immune to be a factor in the spread of a disease? For Covid-19 the number I’ve heard is sixty percent (60%). However, that number is relative – “The more contagious a disease is, the higher percentage you need”. Measles requires 93-95% (See the WebMD link below). We don’t know what that number is for Covid-19 – only that Covid-19 seems to have a high degree of contagion.
Whatever that number is, what will cause the American population to reach that number, and when will that occur?
Just two things can create immunity in a person:
- Contracting the disease, and developing an immune response to it.
- A Vaccine.
This means that we can expect Covid-19 to continue to spread in the population until either a vaccine is developed, or 60% of the population has contracted the disease. All the reports I hear say that availability of a vaccine is a year to a year and a half in the future.
The Census link below, when I looked at it, showed the US Population to be 329,406,000.
Let’s do the math, using published percentages.
Current US Population: 329,406,000
60% of the American population: 197,643,600
The 20% of those with Covid-19 requiring advanced care: 39,528,720
Deaths, assuming a mortality rate of 1%: 1,976,436
If we take the current number of cases of Covid-19 in the United States as 3000, and calculate that that number doubles every six days – as the ourworlddata.org website has calculated as the growth of deaths due to Covid-19 in the United States – the number of infections will reach 60% of the population in just 102 days, June 27, 2020.
This is what no ‘flattening of the curve’ looks like. This is the exponential growth seen so far in Italy and in New York, where the number of cases doubles at a constant rate. Of course, this assumes that Covid-19 continues to spread freely until an effective vaccine is developed. Social distancing and hygiene practices aim to stem this tide.
The American health care system can’t even come close to handling that, which, unless something intervenes, will result in a death rate much greater than any current projection. There is little excess capacity in the American health care system to handle crisis circumstances like we are seeing today, due to the for-profit nature of our health care system. Businesses don’t spend the money to build excess capacity they don’t see a near-term need for.
The Administration needs to begin to deploy the mobile medical capacity of the military right now.
We need to hope like hell that every person takes the need to ‘flatten the curve’ seriously. ‘Flattening the curve’ really means limiting the number of people who are infected at any point in time. This also means – if we are truly fortunate – that the number of calendar months where we as a nation are actively dealing with this will be greatly extended. If you think that the warmer months ahead will bring a respite – don’t count on it. Southern hemisphere and warmer climate areas are not now being spared. This is likely the new normal for the next year or so until a vaccine is widely available.
Amy Klobuchar Monday night made some good points. Not all Covid-19 tests are created equal – some have a higher rate of false negatives, clearing a person who really has the virus to go back into their home and spread the infection. This administration still is refusing to accept the WHO (World Health Organization) Covid-19 test, considered the current ‘gold standard’ test, in favor of domestically developed tests that, coincidentally, are patent-able and create greater profits for the developer.
She also talked about a test to determine who has already had – and developed immunity to – Covid-19. With a significant number of people who experience no symptoms, this knowledge would bring a sense of relief to these people, who also can contribute to the labor force with no fear Covid-19.
We are fortunate that the Loveland / Fort Collins area is lagging other parts of the country in rate of infection. This likely won’t be the case much longer.
Our communities must ‘go overboard’ in efforts to flatten the curve in order to avoid catastrophic results for the most vulnerable of our community.
Death is not the only negative result – this is a lower respiratory infection that leaves some with permanent lung damage. There is not enough information to know whether younger people who recover from relatively moderate symptoms will suffer any long-term damage later in life.
I hope this information motivates you to take every possible precaution to avoid infecting your household. Every family member must take this seriously.
The whole point is to do everything you can to maintain your home as a virus-free zone. Assume that everything you bring into your home is contaminated – packages, clothing, your body. We keep hydrogen peroxide laundry bleach in a spray bottle and disinfect all items brought into the house. Clothes worn in public go right into the washer, and then I shower. It is being reported that the virus on hard surfaces can survive for several days, and up to 9 days in a laboratory setting. On soft surfaces, the virus inactivates more quickly – whatever that means.
I’ve included more information links below.
https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/work/protection
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/news/20181130/what-herd-immunity-and-how-does-it-protect-us
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
Case-Fatality Risk Estimates for COVID-19 Calculated by Using a Lag Time for Fatality
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0320_article