UNIVERSITY NEWS Board boosts McPhee's pay by $14,750

[RaiderDawg78]

That’s wishful thinking but more fantasy than reality. Neither of the other two transmitted as easily as this current version. While MERS was much more deadly it was much easier to contain. SARS transmitted person to person but virulence matters. If it transmits but is harder for me to pass it to you it’s much easier to use contact tracing and isolation to stop it over time. Any chance at containment with COVID was lost a long time ago because it is so efficient at being passed from person to person. That’s the main reason we are now in a pandemic. A lot of people don’t know this but after leaving MT in 2001 I was hired at CDC. I worked the SARS outbreak in 2002/3. This one is very, very different.

That said keep your eye on Mexico. Things are about to turn dire there and in parts of Latin America. We are a long way from seeing the worst of this whereas we were already seeing the benefit of the mitigation measures at this stage with the other two. Don’t be surprised to see a massive military presence on the southern border in the weeks ahead.

We graduated the same year and ended up working at the same place.

I disagree with it being fantasy as much as we don’t now what is going to happen. Transmission may slow like most enveloped viruses and then return, it may not slow at all in high temperature relying on public health polices to slow it or it possibly could disappear. I don’t think it will disappear, but looking at molecular characteristics and talking to some coronavirologists, SARS-Cov1 shouldn’t have disappeared like it did.

 

[MT01]

We graduated the same year and ended up working at the same place.

I disagree with it being fantasy as much as we don’t now what is going to happen. Transmission may slow like most enveloped viruses and then return, it may not slow at all in high temperature relying on public health polices to slow it or it possibly could disappear. I don’t think it will disappear, but looking at molecular characteristics and talking to some coronavirologists, SARS-Cov1 shouldn’t have disappeared like it did.

Admittedly, there is a lot we still don’t know about this but the best current studies on this for now demonstrate a virus that is more efficiently transmitted than the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Therefore, any assumptions that it’s just going to die out like SARS or MERS is aspirational at best. SARS-Cov1 lacked the ability for sustained and efficient human-to-human transmission. This made it somewhat easier to defeat. I too am surprised it didn’t return but again if you can break the cycle of transmission you can eliminate viruses (like we have others such as smallpox whether that’s through vaccination or other prevention measures).

And because COVID-19 has been just as efficient transmitting in places like Florida and South America where it’s warm, we simply aren’t likely to see the curve flatten on its on from a seasonal perspective. The only thing that’s going to achieve that is mitigation efforts like staying home or a vaccine. I’m suggesting that’s highly (like extremely) more likely than it petering out on its on.

 

[SpaceRaider]

take from this what you will...

 

[dukewayne]

Some more info to further chew on:

A week or two ago, local hospital tells staff time to gear up for the onslaught. All vacation days, days off, etc, are canceled as it's all hands on deck time. Now same area hospital just in the last couple of days are cutting shifts back down to less than full time levels due to low census.

Admittedly, it could be that it is the calm before the storm. The uptick in cases could be slow moving into this area, who knows? For me, it at least suggests that the models are not exactly as accurate as we're being led to believe.

 

[RaiderDawg78]

Those numbers agree with the what we know about these types of viruses. Take the same enveloped virus, but it in summer vs winter conditions and it changes the transmission efficiency. Doesn’t mean it will disappear completely. Fact is, no one knows what the virus behavior will be. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

 

[MTLynn]

I ran across this: