Replies

it all begins with this graph, it seems:

Tweet: Drew A. Harris, #PopulationHealth, #HealthPolicy teacher, thought leader, innovator, consultant, advocate, analyst, #FlattenTheCurve.
Important to remember that #Covid-19 epidemic control measures may only delay cases, not prevent. However, this helps limit surge and gives hospitals time to prepare and manage. It’s the difference between finding an ICU bed & ventilator or being treated in the parking lot tent.
GRAPH
28 Feb 2020
https://twitter.com/drewaharris/status/1233267475036372992

27 March: NYT: Flattening the Coronavirus Curve
One chart explains why slowing the spread of the infection is nearly as important as stopping it.
By Siobhan Roberts
At the end of February, Drew Harris, a population health analyst at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, had just flown across the country to visit his daughter in Eugene, Ore., when he saw an article on his Google news feed. It was from The Economist, and was about limiting the damage of the coronavirus.

The accompanying art, by the visual-data journalist Rosamund Pearce, based on a graphic that had appeared in a C.D.C. paper titled “Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza,” showed what Dr. Harris called two epi curves. One had a steep peak indicating a surge of coronavirus outbreak in the near term; the other had a flatter slope, indicating a more gradual rate of infection over a longer period of time.

The gentler curve results in fewer people infected at this critical moment in time — preventing a surge that would inundate the healthcare system and ultimately, one hopes, resulting in fewer deaths. “What we need to do is flatten that down,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during the coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on a Tuesday evening in early March. “You do that with trying to interfere with the natural flow of the outbreak.”

The infographic reminded Dr. Harris of something similar that he had designed years earlier for a pandemic preparedness training program. “Folks in the preparedness and public health community have been thinking about all of these issues for many years,” Dr. Harris said in an email. “Understanding and managing surge is an important part of preparedness.”...
https://www.nytimes.com/article/flatten-curve-coronavirus.html

much of MSM claims Trump came up with the 15 days, but it could be both the 15 and 30 day plans came from the “experts”:

Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing 31 March 2020
THE PRESIDENT: Fifteen days ago, we published our nationwide guidelines to slow the spread of the virus. On Sunday, I announced that this campaign will be extended until April 30th.
In a few moments, Dr. Birx will explain the data that formed the basis for our decision to extend the guidelines, and Dr. Fauci will explain why it’s absolutely critical for the American people to follow the guidelines for the next 30 days...

DR. BIRX: Thank you, Mr. President. If I can have the first slide, please.
(A slide presentation begins.)
So always — and that’s what this slide is labeled, is “Goals of Community Mitigation.” Really highlighting that this begins in the middle and the end with community. This community and the community of the American people that are going to have to do the things for the next 30 days to make a difference.
I think you know from that large blue mountain that you can see behind me — and I just want to thank the five or six international and domestic modelers from Harvard, from Columbia, from Northeastern, from Imperial who helped us tremendously. It was their models that created the ability to see what these mitigations could do, how steeply they could depress the curve from that giant blue mountain down to that more stippled area.

In their estimates, they had between 1.5 million and 2.2 million people in the United States succumbing to this virus without mitigation. Yet, through their detailed studies and showing us what social distancing would do, what people — what would happen if people stayed home, what would happen if people were careful every day to wash their hands and worry about touching their faces, that what an extraordinary thing this could be if every American followed these. And it takes us to that stippled mountain that’s much lower — a hill, actually — down to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths, which is still way too much. Next slide please.

Simultaneously, there was a modeler out of the University of Washington that modeled from cases up, utilizing the experience around the globe to really understand how this information that we have from Italy and Spain and South Korea and China could really help us give insight into the hospital needs, the ventilator needs, and really the number of people who potentially could succumb to this illness. It is this model that we are looking at now that provides us the most detail of the time course that is possible. But this model assumes full mitigation.

It’s informed every morning or every night by the reality on the ground coming in from New York, New Jersey, and around the United States, and is modeled and informed every morning so that it is adjusted so it is up to date every day. This is the model of the predicted fatalities and mortality in the United States. And as the President said, it’s very much focused on the next two weeks and the stark reality of what this virus will do as it moves through communities...

DR. FAUCI: Thank you very much, Dr. Birx, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President. So what Dr. Birx has really said very simply is that there are really two dynamic forces that are opposing each other here. As I mentioned several times in our briefings, the virus, if left to its own devices, will do that dark curve that Dr. Birx showed you. The other dynamic force is what we are doing, what we’re trying to do, and what we will do in the form of mitigation...

Now, the 15 days that we had of mitigation clearly have had an effect, although it’s tough to quantitate it because of those two opposing forces. But the reason why we feel so strongly about the necessity of the additional 30 days is that now is the time, whenever you’re having an effect, not to take your foot off the accelerator and on the brake but to just press it down on the accelerator. And that’s what I hope and I know that we can do over the next 30 days...

This is tough. People are suffering. People are dying. It’s inconvenient from a societal standpoint, from an economic standpoint to go through this, but this is going to be the answer to our problems. So let’s all pull together and make sure, as we look forward to the next 30 days, we do it with all the intensity and force that we can...

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The American people have now seen what the President saw when he made the decision at the end of “15 Days to Slow the Spread” to ask the American people to give us 30 more days to continue to put into practice the President’s coronavirus guidelines for America. And as you just heard from the experts, we have reason to believe that it’s working...
It really is what every American can do: “30 Days to Slow the Spread,” 30 days to make a difference in the lives of the American people, American families, and the life of our nation...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-15/