Harvard Researchers Say Some Social Distancing May Be Needed Into 2022

[glockman]

Harvard Researchers Say Some Social Distancing May Be Needed Into 2022
By
John Tozzi
April 15, 2020, 12:01 AM GMT+8

• Much is still unknown about the virus and humanity’s response
• Infections could return after measures lifted, researchers say

Customers wearing protective masks and gloves stand in line outside a grocery store in Austin, Texas, on April 13.
Photographer: Bronte Wittpenn/Bloomberg

People around the world might need to practice some level of social distancing intermittently through 2022 to stop Covid-19 from surging anew and overwhelming hospital systems, a group of Harvard disease researchers said Tuesday.

Lifting social-distancing measures all at once could risk simply delaying the epidemic’s peak and potentially making it more severe, the scientists warned in an article published Tuesday in the journal Science.

The course of the pandemic will depend on questions not yet answered: Will the virus’s spread change with the seasons? What immunity will people have after they’re infected? And does exposure to coronaviruses that cause mild illnesses confer any protection against the pathogen that causes Covid-19?

Those questions are being weighed by government leaders who have seen economies around the globe come to a standstill because of the social-distancing measures. With millions of people out of work and staying home, pressure is growing to loosen restrictions in the U.S. and elsewhere. Doing so, experts have said, will depend on having in place measures to control the disease, such as widespread testing.

The Harvard researchers used computer models to simulate how the pandemic might play out. One possibility is that strict social distancing followed by intensive public-health detective work could chase down and eradicate the virus. That’s what happened with SARS-CoV-1, which caused a 2003 outbreak. But with confirmed cases of the new pathogen approaching 2 million globally, that outcome is seen as increasingly unlikely, the researchers wrote.

Seasonal Illness

More likely is that the virus is here to stay like influenza, traveling the globe seasonally. In one model, 20 weeks of measures to limit spread were followed by an epidemic peak that was as great as an uncontrolled spread.

“The social distancing was so effective that virtually no population immunity was built,” the researchers said of that scenario. If the virus is more transmissible in colder months, delaying the peak into the autumn could exacerbate the strain on health-care systems, they wrote.

To avoid such outcomes, on-and-off social distancing measures might be needed until 2022, unless hospital capacity is increased, or effective vaccines or treatments are developed.

The authors don’t endorse a particular path forward but said they sought “to identify likely trajectories of the epidemic under alternative approaches.”

I hope social distancing will be the norm from here on. I fucking hate people cramping my space, sharing the air I breathe. Unless of course if it was a chio bu.

 

[hofmann]

It's a big first step.

Johnson and Johnson is already gearing up for phase 1 trials of their vaccines. What's India doing?

 

[syed putra]

'I HAVE NO EXPLANATION BUT THE NUMBERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES'
Top Israeli prof claims simple stats show virus plays itself out after 70 days
Isaac Ben-Israel, who is not a medical expert, says analysis worldwide shows new cases peaking after about 40 days, slams economic closures; leading doctor dismisses his claims
By TOI STAFF14 April 2020, 4:47 pm 26

• 7,540shares

Isaac Ben-Israel (Photo credit: Courtesy)
A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.
Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, told Israel’s Channel 12 (Hebrew) Monday night that research he conducted with a fellow professor, analyzing the growth and decline of new cases in countries around the world, showed repeatedly that “there’s a set pattern” and “the numbers speak for themselves.”

While he said he supports social distancing, the widespread shuttering of economies worldwide constitutes a demonstrable error in light of those statistics. In Israel’s case, he noted, about 140 people normally die every day. To have shuttered much of the economy because of a virus that is killing one or two a day is a radical error that is unnecessarily costing Israel 20% of its GDP, he charged.
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Prof. Gabi Barbash, a hospital director and the former Health Ministry director general, insisted in a bitter TV exchange that Ben-Israel is mistaken, and that the death tolls would have been far higher if Israel and other countries had not taken the steps they did.

Gabi Barbash, Director General at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, April 7, 2020. (Channel 12)
But Ben-Israel said the figures — notably from countries, such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Sweden, which did not take such radical measures to shutter their economies — proved his point. (He also posted a Hebrew paper to this effect on Facebook, with graphs showing the trajectories.)
When Barbash cited New York as ostensible proof that Ben-Israel was mistaken, Ben-Israel noted the latest indications from New York were precisely in line with his statistics that indicate daily new cases figures peaking and starting to fall after about 40 days.
Asked to explain the phenomenon, Ben-Israel, who also heads Israel’s Space Agency, later said: “I have no explanation. There are all kinds of speculations. Maybe it’s related to climate, or the virus has a life-span of its own.”
He said the policy of lockdowns and closures was a case of “mass hysteria.” Simple social distancing would be sufficient, he said.
If the lockdowns instituted in Israel and elsewhere were not causing such immense economic havoc, there wouldn’t be a problem with them, he said. “But you shouldn’t be closing down the entire country when most of the population is not at high risk.”
Asked to explain why the virus had caused such a high death toll in countries such as Italy, he said the Italian health service was already overwhelmed. “It collapsed in 2017 because of the flu,” he said.
Barbash, speaking after Ben-Israel had left the studio, insisted that “we’re going to be living with the coronavirus for the next year.”
He added: “I strongly urge that we not let mathematicians — who know nothing about biology — determine when we lift the lockdown