First-person accounts. In previous posts I linked to accounts from Italy (one, two, three) and New Orleans. This time I have accounts from Washington (older account but good details) and New York City (one, two). Another account from New Orleans. Video from an pulmonary specialist in New York City with practical tips to avoid infection.
We know from all these accounts that about 10-20% of those infected with the virus need hospitalization, so the hospital can jammed up beyond capacity. The virus might have a death rate of 5-10% of those hospitalized in ideal situations, but the death rate goes up to 8% or more in overloaded hospitals. In Italy, many people just stayed home and died there.
The hospitals in northern Italy got slammed about March 8, and the country instituted a quarantine. Eighteen days later and the death toll is still at a peak. There may be some relief after three weeks, which is the average time between exposure and death.
That means for New York City there probably won't see any relief until April 13... if New Yorkers were as blase about contacts as NY mayor DiBlasio was. (DiBlasio didn't close schools until 3/23.) Probably enough New Yorkers started being careful about contact by 3/14 that there might be a noticeable decline in deaths by April 4. But New York has a huge population that is a large reservoir for infection, so the peak may last many more weeks. The example of Italy is that we don't know how long to expect the peak to last.
All these shutdowns are so annoying--to those who want a strong economy going into the elections this fall. It's terribly inconvenient and unfair to have a pandemic spoiling the economy (and election chances). So some, including Trump, are suggesting that we get back to normal as soon as possible, pandemic be damned! Young people should go back to work and elders stay home (one suggestion). The recovered should go back to work. The exposed should go back to work if they aren't having symptoms. Maybe even the older should go to work and the young stay home.
All these ideas ignore some basic facts that can't be fudged. More exposures means more people getting infected, and passing it on. Most jobs are skilled, and absences mean that the workplace will be disrupted. The idea that people can continue working ignores that many will get sick, so soon the workplaces would be closing anyway due to lack of workers and patrons. It's hard to say how soon this would happen. The infection is more concentrated in cities at this point, but it's also inexorably spreading. So will medium sized cities in Ohio have too many sick in 4 weeks or in 8 weeks? We don't know. It's hard to explain why so many GOPers don't understand this--maybe happy-thinking is the mantra and endemic. One contrarian is Liz Cheney, but she doesn't have much of a voice.
So the upshot is that this pandemic, and the way this virus spreads, was always going to be highly disruptive unless it was contained extremely quickly. In the US, we missed that window, so we are taking the huge economic lumps for that. There is no avoiding it.
Image: omfif.org
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