Apr 17, 2020 08:13 AM
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04...-lipsitch/
EXCERPT: A new paper by researchers from Harvard’s school of public health modeling the spread of covid-19 in the United States says that “prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022.” The emphasis in many news reports about the paper is on the date, which is startling. Most of us are hoping for some relief far sooner than that. But if modeling results during this pandemic have taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t fixate on a number that makes for an arresting headline. Instead, we should focus on the may.
The paper, published on April 14 in the journal Science, brings something new and important to the table. [...] The researchers’ model, by their own description, makes many simplifying assumptions.
[...] Under these assumptions—and assuming in addition that social distancing reduces the virus’s transmissibility by 60% and that summertime reduces it by 40%—the model forecasts that in order to maintain the number of cases requiring critical care below what hospitals can currently handle, the US would need to maintain current social distancing conditions through the middle of May, reinstate them for the month of August and again in late October through the end of the year, and then from February to April 2021, in June 2021, and for comparable periods in 2022 and beyond.
[...] with so many unknowns, the combinations of parameters can quickly multiply. The researchers considered dozens of different scenarios in their paper. In all of them, “several rounds of social distancing will be required to get us to herd immunity in the absence of a vaccine,” Lipsitch said.
The uncertainty is about how many rounds would be needed, and there is no reason to believe with confidence that it has to take until the summer of 2022. It should be possible to much more than double the number of critical care beds, for instance. Effective contact tracing would allow us to identify more accurately who is most likely to have been exposed to the disease instead of having to lock entire districts down. And if widespread tests can be conducted in the next month or so, we’ll have much better data on how far the virus has spread, and how far it could still go.
[...] But as Zeynep Tufekci noted in the Atlantic, such models aren’t supposed to predict the future. Rather, they’re supposed to describe “a range of possibilities”—and “those possibilities are highly sensitive to our actions.” We might be in for years of isolation if we don’t take certain actions. We could choose to take them instead... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: A new paper by researchers from Harvard’s school of public health modeling the spread of covid-19 in the United States says that “prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022.” The emphasis in many news reports about the paper is on the date, which is startling. Most of us are hoping for some relief far sooner than that. But if modeling results during this pandemic have taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t fixate on a number that makes for an arresting headline. Instead, we should focus on the may.
The paper, published on April 14 in the journal Science, brings something new and important to the table. [...] The researchers’ model, by their own description, makes many simplifying assumptions.
[...] Under these assumptions—and assuming in addition that social distancing reduces the virus’s transmissibility by 60% and that summertime reduces it by 40%—the model forecasts that in order to maintain the number of cases requiring critical care below what hospitals can currently handle, the US would need to maintain current social distancing conditions through the middle of May, reinstate them for the month of August and again in late October through the end of the year, and then from February to April 2021, in June 2021, and for comparable periods in 2022 and beyond.
[...] with so many unknowns, the combinations of parameters can quickly multiply. The researchers considered dozens of different scenarios in their paper. In all of them, “several rounds of social distancing will be required to get us to herd immunity in the absence of a vaccine,” Lipsitch said.
The uncertainty is about how many rounds would be needed, and there is no reason to believe with confidence that it has to take until the summer of 2022. It should be possible to much more than double the number of critical care beds, for instance. Effective contact tracing would allow us to identify more accurately who is most likely to have been exposed to the disease instead of having to lock entire districts down. And if widespread tests can be conducted in the next month or so, we’ll have much better data on how far the virus has spread, and how far it could still go.
[...] But as Zeynep Tufekci noted in the Atlantic, such models aren’t supposed to predict the future. Rather, they’re supposed to describe “a range of possibilities”—and “those possibilities are highly sensitive to our actions.” We might be in for years of isolation if we don’t take certain actions. We could choose to take them instead... (MORE - details)