In a Twitter thread March 10, one of the coauthors of that study, Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, noted that as community spread increases, social distancing—however painful—becomes essential to slowing and minimizing the impact of disease.
In the thread, he references a comparison of outbreaks of the 1918 pandemic flu in Philadelphia and St. Louis. In Philadelphia, authorities downplayed the spread of disease and did not issue social-distancing measures quickly. They even went forward with a city-wide parade as the disease spread. St. Louis, on the other hand, quickly implemented social distancing measures within days of the area’s first reported cases. The graph below shows how well things worked out for each city.
We are watching every media outlet criticize Trump’s prediction of getting the country back up and running by Easter. Boston Globe headline today: “Could we really end the Coronavirus crisis in two weeks if we stopped all interaction? Sorry, no. Here’s why” This is typical of most of the media advice today. President Trump is bring vilified for suggesting this.
Yet, we saw one of his two chief medical advisors, Dr. Brix deliver some optimism this week.
Although that’s very troubling, Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is saying there have been some positive signs over the last three days, an indication that they may have hit their peak on Saturday and are “flattening their curve.”
Birx spoke with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday and highlighted the development, according to the Washington Examiner.
“We’re looking at the Italy data. I think we’re — we’re encouraged over the last few days to watch the number of deaths starting to decline,” Birx said. “That will be our first indicator that what we put in place and what they put in place in Italy three weeks ago is starting to have — or two weeks ago is starting to have an impact now. Because deaths are a measure of what you did two and three weeks ago, not what you did now.”
For the past few days the new deaths and the news cases have begun to slow, they’ve been below the peak on Saturday.
The US has 74,245 cases as of today. And, 1,067 deaths. Of those cases, 37,258 are in New York state. And, 385 deaths.
Remember this:
According to the DailyWire, … “Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, who created the highly-cited Imperial College London coronavirus model, which has been cited by organizations like The New York Times and has been instrumental in governmental policy decision-making, offered a massively downgraded projection of the potential deathtoll on Wednesday.”
“Ferguson’s model projected 2.2 million dead people in the United States and 500,000 in the U.K. from COVID-19 if no action were taken to slow the virus and blunt its curve. The model predicted far fewer deaths if lockdown measures — measures such as those taken by the British and American governments — were undertaken.”
“After just one day of ordered lockdowns in the U.K., Ferguson is presenting drastically downgraded estimates, crediting lockdown measures, but also revealing that far more people likely have the virus than his team figured.”
“…Based on both those revised estimates and the lockdown measures taken by the British government, the epidemiologist predicts, hospitals will be just fine taking on COVID-19 patients and estimates 20,000 or far fewer people will die from the virus itself or from its agitation of other ailments, as reported by New Scientist Wednesday.”
No revised prediction for the United States, I would suppose it would be lower than 2.2 million, but then the MSM couldn’t scare the people and get more clicks/eyeballs with their cheerleading for the worst possible outcome.
Thanks, Doug, very inciteful.