So I read any interesting article in the nytimes
entitled: The Coronavirus in America: The Year ahead. Some interesting parts:
“If Americans pour
back out in force, all will appear quiet for perhaps three weeks. Then the
emergency rooms will get busy again.”
“Surges are
inevitable, the models predict, even when stadiums, churches, theaters, bars
and restaurants remain closed, all travelers from abroad are quarantined for 14
days, and domestic travel is tightly restricted to prevent high-intensity areas
from reinfecting low-intensity ones.”
“Imagine an America
divided into two classes: those who have recovered from infection with the
coronavirus and presumably have some immunity to it; and those who are still
vulnerable.”
“Soon the government
will have to invent a way to certify who is truly immune. A test for IgG
antibodies, which are produced once immunity is established”
“As Americans stuck in
lockdown see their immune neighbors resuming their lives and perhaps even
taking the jobs they lost, it is not hard to imagine the enormous temptation to
join them through self-infection, experts predicted. Younger citizens in
particular will calculate that risking a serious illness may still be better
than impoverishment and isolation.”
“once a national
baseline of hundreds of thousands of daily tests is established across the
nation, any viral spread can be spotted when the percentage of positive results
rises.”
“Ultimately,
suppressing a virus requires testing all the contacts of every known case. “
“Any effort to make a
vaccine will take at least a year to 18 months.”
“All the experts
familiar with vaccine production agreed that even that timeline was optimistic.
“the record is four
years, for the mumps vaccine.”
“Several felt that
so-called convalescent serum could work.”
“Having a daily preventive pill would be an
even better solution, because pills can be synthesized in factories far faster
than vaccines or antibodies can be grown and purified.”
“But even if one were
invented, production would have to ramp up until it was as ubiquitous as
aspirin, so 300 million Americans could take it daily.”
My takeaways:
1. We've got a long road ahead of us
2. We know almost nothing
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