Last edited Tue Mar 31, 2020, 04:18 AM - Edit history (1)
When the rate of infection is very low there will be more herd immunity for us and the virus will move on to look for other hosts, hosts that don't exist as everyone is self isolating. Imagine if the Trump said two months ago "stand by yourself and have no contact with anybody else for the next 14 days". The virus would have caused havock on the people who already had it but, after 14 days, the virus would be mostly gone because it could not survive having no new hosts and the 8 cases could be isolated and resolved in the near future. With fewer infected people, there is less virus around. So when we are coming down the other side of the curve we have bent, it is important to not stop self isolation until the rate of infection has fallen really, really low. And not before then. Otherewise, the crisis could reboot. When that point is reached and people start to run around you keep testing and put out new clusters here and there. It could very well come back in a big way again. And then again. But at that point we might have a vaccine or better treatments and more and more herd immunity. It could turn seasonal. Depends how long people who have had the virus stay immune. Or how much coronavirus mutates. That would lessen herd immunity. The hope is that it is this one time and we get our act together and stamp out little outbreaks here and there and develop a vaccine. Or ten. You are right to be worried.
Think of all that shaded area under the curve as the amount of virus there is.
Don't take word or anybody elses. Read the Hammer and the Dance (i found the graphs really hard to follow so i gave up and just read the text). https://medium.com/%40tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
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