In terms of actual CV mortality drop-off - either here or in Italy - this would translate into (at least) three possible explanations:
1. Social distancing restricted/eliminated a potential population for the virus to (exponentially) grow into;
2. Herd/youth immunity is beginning to develop - among certain sectors - which serves to decouple fatals from actual gross numbers of infected;
3. Actual population limits have been reached ie there's no more there there for the virus to (exponentially) grow.
Case #1 may be true for the US - starting with the jump start on Friday the 13th - but I think Italy may have acted too late, and might actually be experiencing #3.
Case #2 is obviously the most favorable outcome. It's the one that I believe Trump is attempting in order to "thread the needle". That is, modified/amended emergency 15 day order that maintains/alters a few things:
- keeps children from large groups aka school
- allows the main work force of adults to get back in the saddle again
- keeps older and at risk in isolation
If it turns out #2 is not valid, and that we only had a close call because of imposing #1, then that will be obviously closely monitored.
When this event is over, the analysts will be able to determine if the US actually experienced #3 (ie CV had been present since Dec 2019), but due to a number of factors we didn't have a similar experience as Italy. (Age, life styles, living conditions, health system, etc.)
The overall morbidity/hospitalization rate is what makes me wonder if this virus was created.
For the same reason NATO adjusted their caliber.
Before that caliber change you either got shot and probably died, or you didn’t get shot and probably lived.
After, if you got shot you probably lived but with MUCH expended effort by your own people to make that so.
This virus isn’t a population reducer.
It’s a health care system destroyer.
Even if you triage your resources to the 60 and under group you’ll still have a LOT of your prime earning age range down for the count with this.
And your hospitals won’t be doing much of anything else for a long time.
That lawyer in NY that seems to have been a super spreader spent 3 weeks in the ICU IIRC. What is that kind of bill going to do to his finances and him already 50ish? He’ll never be able to retire. Or, he’ll declare bankruptcy and we’ll ALL pay for that.
And it’ll be months before he’s ‘up and at ‘em’ again.
I would add that we must view the data with granularity as Dr. Birx likes to say. When you break down the data by state and county, you can develop several different approaches whether it is containment, mitigation, etc. One size does not fit all in a country this big. Germany is about the size of Oregon in area.
We can tailor our approach by location, age, sex, population density, cases, and many other factors once we have sufficient data. I view this exercise as invaluable in preparing our country for bio-terrorism attacks.
“When this event is over, the analysts will be able to determine if the US actually experienced #3 (ie CV had been present since Dec 2019), but due to a number of factors we didn’t have a similar experience as Italy. (Age, life styles, living conditions, health system, etc.)”
It’s simple. Trump stopped the first wave almost entirely with his travel ban. One super spreader got through and killed a bunch in WA state, probably others as well, but not the hordes it would otherwise have been. Italy got hundreds of thousands of Chinese back after the Chinese New Year. Many were infected and the virtue signalers told people to hug them in compassion. Mass infections due to FluBroism.
The second wave is from people returning from Europe or ignoring travel restrictions to Iran (anybody still buying Iran’s numbers, by the way?) causing outbreaks in NYC and in CA. Trump imposed restrictions but those weren’t as effective as the China ones - it was too slow.
The third wave, which may predate the second, but was going later, is the border crossers, particularly from the southern border. Mexico is about to experience a serious crisis and we are going to have border crashers. Mexico might be pretending they don’t have a problem, but it will become evident soon enough.
Oh, and Brazil has quite a few cases. Weather does not seem to be as much a factor as we hoped.
Africa is going to explode soon as well. They probably just don’t see it coming as clearly, yet. Or, maybe, just maybe, the chronic HCQ users, taking it to protect against Malaria, are offering a degree of herd immunity.
Good times, right?