Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CHtwDXy63BsLkQx4n/covid-12-24-we-re-f-ed-it-s-over

by rosstex • 6 years ago

8 2 6 years ago

lesswrong.com

coding123• 6 years ago

https://vitamind4all.org/letter.html

mlthoughts2018• 6 years ago

The main take aways seem to be:

1. If the new strain is in the ballpark of being 70% more infectious (that is, it essentially raises r0 by 70%), then it would require an unrealistic degree of ultra lockdown / shutdown to even maintain stasis in terms of cases.

2. The media’s underplaying it and the public likely would be so outraged by the necessary level of shutdown that we shouldn’t count on that happening.

3. Vaccinations won’t amount to a large enough herd immunity for many months, probably not until May or June. And even then, if the strain is this much more infectious, it could overwhelm and essentially reach an escape velocity beyond the vaccine - saturating so many highly transmissible cases that it will eventually require everyone to be vaccinated or to survive getting the virus to actually get rid of it, not merely herd immunity from a large pool of vaccinated people.

All the same worries about economic crash, extended shut down, cascading layoffs, etc., could shoot back up very fast.

This of course might end up to be no worry if the new strain’s increase of infectiousness is low enough, but there is high probability the infectiousness increase is large.

Enough to be quite worried.

Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over

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