Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director at Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, had some bleak news about the future of the COVID-19 pandemic on Friday.
“Expect many more New Yorks to occur,” he said.
How I wish he were talking about purple states turning blue…
This push by some governors to open before meeting any of the safe opening benchmarks experts are calling for isn’t going to help this.
Sounds about right…which means these experts will be ignored for the most part.
The virus will likely keep spreading for 18 to 24 months…“This is going to continue to do that until 60% or 70% of the population has been infected…Expect many more New Yorks to occur."
Sure, but at least we avoided the apocalyptic dystopia of electing Pantsuit Lady.
Because, oh my G-d, what a disaster that would’ve been!
But summer is here! People have to go to the beach! It is in the Constitution!
What would Frankie and Annette do?
Yeah, scientists say it might take 2 years for the virus to spread to herd immunity levels (assuming there is herd immunity for it) while these governors are chafing at the bit after 1.5 months. And people will suffer needlessly for their sycophancy to El Trumbo.
We’re going to see rolling outbreaks through the states that open things up to a wide number of business types through the summer…each time, a state, or some part of it, will experience an explosion of cases, and either lock things back down or just try to ride it out. We’ll see rural counties decide they don’t need to follow orders because “the virus is in the cities”, and then have their own outbreaks (which will be deadly due to the poverty and lack of health resources there). It’s going to continue on, and move around the nation, and even affects the places being smart because infected people will travel into the states like CA that are being careful.
Hitting herd immunity when this is killing 0.5-1% of the people who get it means a couple million American deaths unless we get a vaccine or therapeutics that keep people from dying. More will die if we open up more quickly…we should push this back as far as possible. It’s going to be hard…not on the protestors who are being selfish assholes, but on the poor and those forced to choose working or eating. Sure, I want to go out, but I’ll damn well stay home as long as it takes to save other people’s lives.
I hope this cheery pronouncement doesn’t come about. I mean, reality is good but this is pretty damn daunting.
I agree.
A vaccine should change this.
“This is unacceptable”.
New Zealand was able to say that. And they did the things necessary to deal with COVID at the beginning stages.
Trump and his family are solely responsible for every COVID case beyond a few thousand at most.
At some point letting Team Trump off the hook is no longer an option for the survival of this Nation
But because The Orange Menace has dithered for so long to respond to this public health crisis, that is still probably a year away. Many more will sicken and die due to his inaction.
I agree that his incompetence has caused way more deaths than we should have had and will continue to cause more. But there are over 200 separate research groups around the world working on a vaccine. It’s not just here. God help us if Trump is still in office when another country discovers one first because we won’t get it any time soon I suspect. But Trump really doesn’t have any control over one being developed.
Trump has GOT to be removed from Office. He has got his tentacles into a company tasked with creating a vaccine. And Trump has access to the FDA.
I, for one, would not recommend the taking of any vaccine which is in any way tied to Trump. And no one else should either.
There are decent outfits who are striving for a vaccine. Our own Ralph and also Lawrence O’Donnell have spoken about some folks at Oxford. The word “profit” should be far down on the list of go-to words in this effort
I think this was an assumption from the getgo, and the idea of social distancing, to flatten the infection curve, is to keep ERs from becoming overwhelmed leading to more deaths than would happen otherwise.
ERs are becoming overwhelmed because of the unbelievable corruption and purposeful incompetence of Trump and the GOP. This is the worse-case scenario of long term GOP governance. Any curve-flattening is being done despite them.
Agreed, but he could have done so much more. Not that I expected any competence from him and his flunkies. Let’s hope the actual scientists and researchers are able to succeed.
If we implemented the sort of basic income support some European countries are doing that could offset some of this, but there is no way the Republican sociopaths, sorry for the redundency, in the Senate will let that happen.
It is past time for the American people to act on what we need to do and to make Trump a bystander–and a corrupt one at that.
O he has fucked this up completely. He was briefed on this starting last November.
I could see where this was going myself by the end of January, just from the little stories on CNN for example, still out of Wuhan. In February when Italy started reporting contagion I knew we were in trouble. When Italy went in one day from 15 cases in Bergamo to 62, then in two more days to 350, that’s when I told my husband to cancel our trip, even though we weren’t going to the north. We were going south, where it hasn’t been nearly as bad but I knew better than to be in an international airport or to spend 12 hours on a plane by the last of February and I don’t get intel briefings.
Until November, at least there are governors who are doing what needs to be done.