[Amendment10]

"Most of us have been in lockdown for about six weeks. The objective was to flatten the curve and reduce the total number of victims of COVID-19. Well, the curve has been flattened indeed, but how is it six-weeks later there are 25,375 new cases in a single day?"

Glad that you asked that question Barnacle. As a non-medical person, this is what I think is going on.

“Flattening the curve” was a milestone in the fight against the spread of SARS-CoV-2, not the finish line. As you have indicated, flattening the curve was intended to lower the maximum number of people who needed medical services at the same time so that limited capacity medical services wouldn’t have to refuse anybody.

Here is an excellent simple animated graph that shows what I think you meant.

Note that the area under the graph represents the total number of victims that get infected over time, that number basically constant if I remember correctly, even though the graph gets flatter and flatter.

H O W E V E R…

As you can see from the graph, the cost of flattening the curve to insure medical services means that the virus will take longer to go away. This is because contagious people are still running around, spreading the virus, which is why social distancing mandates are still in effect.

The good news is that as long as people continue to respect social distancing mandates, fewer and fewer people should be getting infected until nobody’s contagious anymore and the virus disappears.

Also, I hope that spring / summer heat makes SARS-CoV-2 go away like it makes the flu disappear.

As I have mentioned I’m non-medical. But consider taking vitamin D3.

Corrections, insights welcome.

Send "Orange Man Bad" federal and state government Democrats and RINOs home in November!

Supporting PDJT with a new patriot Congress and state government leaders that will promise to fully support his already excellent work for MAGA and stopping SARS-CoV-2 will effectively give fast-working Trump a third term in office imo.

[DoodleBob]

Here's another curve that must be flattened.

If I eyeball it, we're approaching an unemployment rate commensurate with an increase of 6 suicides per 100,000 people. If we have 330MM people, that comes to 19,800 new suicides because we've flattened the economy.

The rate of increase in fatalities has slowed - it's been less than 5% per day for the past eleven days. Further, those fatalities are likely arising from cases confirmed about 5-12 days ago. Thankfully, fatalities from coronavirus are on decline.

But people are despondent about their financial situation: they're either out of work, or their business is gone/Chapter 7. And finding a job in this market is very difficult. Should we ignore them?

If we open up business and do a risk-based approach to re-emergence, i.e., recognize that youthful, healthy people have a lower risk of fatality and don't suck the life out of the healthcare system, then we'll reduce the chance of an avalanche of suicides. If we keep fearing for the virus in favor of caring for the unemployed, their deaths are blood on the hands of hysterics and Dem Governors.

[Paul R.]

It is important to note that the fatalities curve does not behave quite this way. The total area under the fatalities’ curve is much higher if the health care system capacity is seriously exceeded.

[Inyo-Mono]

Nice chart.

[reg45]

If you integrate the total area under each curve then you will get the total number of cases. If the areas under the two curves are the same then that means that both curves represent the same number of cases. The strain on the health care system is related to the amplitude (height) of the curve.

[Steve Van Doorn]

Notice the flattened curve is the same number of people that contract the virus if you don't flatten the curve

Which is nearly everyone in both cases once the uncontaminated percentage is passed. Which is 1% of the population