Two new papers published in the journal Nature say that lockdowns put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus were highly effective, prevented tens of millions of infections and saved millions of lives.
"Our estimates show that lockdowns had a really dramatic effect in reducing transmission," says Samir Bhatt, a senior lecturer at the Imperial College London's School of Public Health, who worked on one of the papers published in Nature.
Bhatt's team analyzed infection and death rates in 11 European nations through May 4. They estimate that an additional 3.1 million people in those countries would have died if lockdowns had not been put in place.
"Without them we believe the toll would have been huge," Bhatt says.
In addition to the paper from Bhatt and his colleagues, Nature also published a separate study from the Global Policy Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. That study analyzed lockdowns in China, South Korea, Iran, France, Italy and the United States.
It found that the lockdowns in those six countries averted 62 million confirmed cases.
For example, in the U.S. through the first week of April, there were officially just over 360,000 confirmed cases nationwide. Without lockdowns and other interventions, the researchers at Berkeley calculate that the U.S. would have had nearly 14 times as many by April 6: more than 5 million confirmed cases. To put this in perspective, the U.S. now, two months later, is hitting the 2 million mark.
Solomon Hsiang, director of the Global Policy Lab, says these unprecedented shelter-in-place orders came at an extreme economic cost. Yet when government officials were ordering them, it was unclear exactly how significant the social benefits would be.
"The value of these studies you're seeing today is that they're demonstrating what the benefits of this policy are," Hsiang said in a press call discussing the studies. "They averted tens of millions of additional infections and millions of deaths."
The two studies used different methods to calculate the number of cases averted by the lockdowns. Bhatt's team looked at reported deaths to calculate community transmission that occurred weeks before and used the change in death numbers over time to track how much the lockdowns suppressed transmission. Hsiang's group at Berkeley used economic models usually used to examine how specific policies impact economic growth. They looked at how daily transmission growth rates shifted as lockdowns went into effect. Despite their different approaches, both groups came up with similar findings.
Both sets of researchers also caution that as lockdowns start to ease around the world, public health officials still have very limited tools to combat the coronavirus.
Testing is more widely available. Social distancing has become standard at many shops. Most large gatherings at sporting events and concerts remain banned.
But the virus continues to circulate. The vast majority of people are still susceptible to COVID-19.
Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, this week warned that the world shouldn't ease up in its efforts against this pandemic.
"I know many of us would like this to be over and I know many situations are seeing positive signs. But it is far from over," she said. "We need everyone to focus on the job at hand, which is stopping this pandemic, suppressing transmission and saving lives. There's a lot more work to do. Let's celebrate the successes but let's remain focused on the remaining work that needs to be done because unfortunately this is far from over."
Bhatt also warns that as places come out of lockdown, transmission could rapidly flare back up again without some measures in place to check it.
"We are not saying that, you know, the country needs to stay locked down forever. But it's a cost/benefit situation," Bhatt says. "The longer you stay in lockdown, the less infections you have. People aren't moving around. When you release lockdown and you go for milder interventions, economic stability can return to some degree, but you then have the rise of infections that is possible. What we are saying is that some degree of intervention [against the virus] needs to be in place."
The researchers from both papers say that people need to understand how much of an impact the lockdown measures have been having. Hsiang at Berkeley says that as difficult as this year has been, things would have been much worse if millions of people around the globe hadn't stayed home.
"Without these policies deployed," Hsiang says. "We would have lived through a very different April and May." A period so bad, he says, "that we believe it's probably almost unimaginable."
People with intellectual disabilities and autism who contract COVID-19 die at higher rates than the rest of the population, according to an analysis by NPR of numbers obtained from two states that collect data. They also contract the virus at a higher rate, according to research looking into group homes across the United States.
In Pennsylvania, numbers obtained by NPR show that people with intellectual disabilities and autism who test positive for COVID-19 die at a rate about twice as high as other Pennsylvania residents who contract the illness.
In New York, the state with the most deaths from COVID-19, people with developmental disabilities die at a rate 2.5 times the rate of others who contract the virus.
The numbers in Pennsylvania are compiled by the Office of Developmental Programs of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services and count people who get state services while living in group homes, state institutions or in their own homes. As of June 2, there were 801 confirmed cases and 113 deaths among people with intellectual disabilities and autism. In New York, NPR calculated data obtained from the New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. Of people who get state services from that office, 2,289 have tested positive for COVID-19 and 368 have died.
The high rate of death "is disturbing, but it's not surprising," says Scott Landes, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
He's been collecting his own data from state and private research groups and says people with developmental disabilities who live in group homes have some of the highest death rates from COVID-19 in the country.
"They're more likely four times more likely, we're showing to actually contract COVID-19 than the general population," he says. "And then if they do contract COVID-19, what we're seeing is they're about two times more likely to die from it."
That's higher than the death rates for Hispanics and African Americans.
Landes co-authored a recent study that used private health records to show that 18- to 74-year-olds with developmental disabilities, mostly those diagnosed with autism, who contracted COVID-19 died at nearly twice the rate as others.
Landes says there are two reasons for the high death rates. People with developmental disabilities are far more likely to have a preexisting health condition, such as respiratory disease, that adds to their risk. They're much more likely, than even elderly people, to live in a setting with roommates and staff like group homes where two or four or 10 or more people live together. About 13% to 20% of people with developmental disabilities live in such settings, Landes notes, compared with only about 6% of people over age 65.
"You reside with multiple roommates, with staff coming in and out," says Landes, "your chances of actually contracting COVID are high. And then if someone in your home gets it, it's like there's nowhere you can go."
There has been a lot of attention to the deaths in nursing homes, and with good reason. About a third of all deaths nationwide from COVID-19 have been linked to them. According to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, there have been at least 31,782 deaths of nursing home residents from COVID-19 as of May 31. The CMS total does not count nursing home staff who died.
Medics suit up in personal protective equipment as they prepare to pick up a patient in severe respiratory distress from a group home in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn on May 11. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption
Medics suit up in personal protective equipment as they prepare to pick up a patient in severe respiratory distress from a group home in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn on May 11.
Still, says Nicole Jorwic, senior director for public policy at the Arc, a group that represents people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, there are consequences to paying less attention to people who live in other care home settings.
One result, she says, is that it has been harder for the groups that serve people with disabilities to get personal protective equipment or extra pay for staff workers. In most states, these workers don't get the bonus pay that is sometimes offered to other front-line health care workers and, in some states, the staff who serve people in group homes or their own homes aren't considered essential workers.
"You don't go into a hospital and some doctors have on masks and some don't. Or some are underpaid and some are not," says Antonio McCall, a direct service provider who works with two men at a Philadelphia group home. "No, everyone gets what they're working for. Everyone's covered with protection, because that's what's required."
There have been no infections at the house where McCall works, but there have been some outbreaks of COVID-19 and even a death at others. He says his agency managed to find masks for him, and he has received some extra pay.
And McCall is careful. He doesn't want to bring an infection into the group home or his own home, where he helps care for his mother, who has an underlying health condition, and is raising his niece and nephew.
In New York, a direct service professional working in a group home makes little money "at or below the poverty line," in the mid $20,000s a year, says Tom McAlvanah, president of New York Disability Advocates, a coalition of service providers. He says it has been hard to keep workers healthy and on the job. They're vulnerable not only because of where they work, but because they often rely on public transportation.
McAlvanah says New York's Medicaid program, the main source of payment for group home providers, has failed to increase reimbursements even before the coronavirus pandemic. Now, he says, group home residents have stopped going to work and group home providers have had to pay staff without government reimbursement to work more hours and overtime to run the group homes where residents now spend their full days.
That's the case in most states, although Colorado and several others did increase Medicaid resources to providers. The CARES Act, the coronavirus relief act signed into law in March, became a source of extra funding, but only through the end of June.
Provider agencies say that, on average, they've spent a third of their annual revenue on unexpected costs from the pandemic and have cash reserves to cover a month or less of operations, according to a recent national survey by the American Network of Community Options and Resources, a trade association for groups that provide services to people with disabilities.
"For years and years and years, people we serve in group homes like this, they're the forgotten people," says Todd Goodwin, who runs John F. Murphy Homes, a large provider agency in Maine. "Nobody sees them. Nobody notices them. We see that repeatedly through policy, we see that in financing at the state and federal level. It's been an issue for years."
In Washington state, there was a Zoom meeting last month of men and women with developmental disabilities who belong to an advocacy group called People First of Washington. They spoke of their opposition to state budget cuts that, they worried, would cut off public transportation that they depend on to get to work or cut the hours of their state-funded caregivers. And they were worried about the effects of the coronavirus.
Shane Cody Fairweather, who lives in his own apartment in Chewelah, Wash., with support from service providers, said in an interview that he worries that people like him are not getting attention, despite their risks for contracting COVID-19.
"We're part of society. We're more vulnerable," he says. "It should be on equal footing. They should be paying attention to the elderly and the disabled as well."
Fairweather says there have been no outbreaks of the coronavirus in the apartments where he lives. He's healthy and ready to return to his job as a janitor at the local library.
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) The Cook County Sheriffs Office reports that someone attempted to block the spread of COVID-19 using an unorthodox method.
The sheriffs department says someone placed a very large tree across Highway 61 near the county line.
Investigators dont currently know who it was who put the tree there, but they say they believe it happened because someone was trying to stop an influx of visitors to the area, and in an attempt to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.
Cook County just recently announced the first positive case of the novel coronavirus. At the start of the week, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Health, only Cook and Lake of the Woods counties had yet to report a positive case.
This type of action is reckless, dangerous and uncalled for, Sheriff Pat Eliasen said. Not only does this endanger motorists, but there is also a significant cost to the taxpayers for removal of the tree.
China has been accused by Brussels of running disinformation campaigns inside the European Union, as the bloc set out a plan to tackle a huge wave of false facts about the coronavirus pandemic.
The European commission said Russia and China were running targeted influence operations and disinformation campaigns in the EU, its neighbourhood, and globally. While the charge against Russia has been levelled on many occasions, this is the first time the EU executive has publicly named China as a source of disinformation.
French politicians were furious when a Chinese embassy website claimed in mid-April, at the height of Europes pandemic, that care workers had abandoned their jobs leaving residents to die. The unnamed Chinese diplomat also claimed falsely that 80 French lawmakers had used a racist slur against the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
I believe if we have evidence we should not shy away from naming and shaming, Vra Jourov, a European commission vice-president, told reporters.What we also witnessed is a surge in narratives undermining our democracies and in effect our response to the crisis, for example the claim there are secret US biological laboratories on former Soviet republics has been spread by both pro-Kremlin outlets, as well as Chinese officials and state media.
I strongly believe that a geopolitically strong EU can only materialise if we are assertive, Jourov said, alluding to the aim of the European commissions president, Ursula von der Leyen, for the body to have more clout on the world stage.
The more assertive stance marks a change in tone from a report in March which merely described Chinese media narratives, while focusing the spotlight on disinformation from Kremlin-backed sources. It comes after lawmakers in the European parliament accused the commission of watering down an earlier report on disinformation under pressure from China charges EU officials strongly denied.
EU member states are grappling with how to deal with China on a range of fronts, from foreign policy and security, to the economy. The commission described China as a systemic rival in a 2019 report that was seen by many member states as marking a watershed in how the EU deals with an increasingly aggressive government in Beijing.
The EU commission also issued an implicit rebuke to Donald Trump, as it noted the harmful effects of his bizarre suggestions about injecting bleach to treat coronavirus. Without naming the US president, a commission document stated that such false claims can be very harmful, noting that Belgiums Poison Control Centre has recorded an increase of 15% in the number of bleach-related incidents.
Jourov repeated her praise of Twitter for putting a factchecking tagon two of Trumps recent tweets, while saying she would like to see a similar approach taken by social media companies on other false information.Be it the president, be the diplomats, be it me. when we [politicians] say something we have to be accountable and we should be able to stand that somebody goes and checks the facts.
The commission has encouraged social media companies to sign a voluntary code of practice on disinformation, while threatening regulation if they fail to act. The latest report steps up demands on platforms to be more transparent in sharing data with researchers and intensify work with independent fact checkers.I would not like the platforms themselves to be the arbiters of truth, Jourov said.
The Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok has become the latest company to sign the code of practice, the commission said, joining the likes of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) As reopening continues across the country and Tennessee and its biggest cities have entered phase two of reopening, hospitalizations are up across the state, according to research by ABC.
Nearly 20 states are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases in the weeks since reopening, but two states among the earliest to reopen are seeing a dramatic increase in those hospitalized in the last week compared to the week before: Arkansas (65.8%) and Tennessee (65.1%).
The consequence probably of opening up, said Dr. William Schaffner with Vanderbilt Medical Centers Division of Infectious Diseases, As we opened up, there were more opportunities for people to get together and more opportunities for the COVID virus to spread.
The number of positive cases in Tennessee during a 7-day span from May 25 to June 1 and June 1 to June 8 only increased by a few hundred, but hospitalizations changed by 65 percent.
Were certainly seeing it in Tennessee, its a gradual rise throughout the state and indeed in Nashville, said Schaffner.
Schaffner added that hospitalizations require specific symptoms, age, or underlying illnesses.
Theyre more likely to need hospitalization because they have much more severe disease, they develop some trouble breathing, and thats why theyre hospitalized, he said.
This doesnt mean COVID-19 is getting more severe as we reopen, but instead, its reaching more people who may have compromised immune systems.
The more the virus spreads in the community, the more likely it is to find someone whos older and someone who has an underlying illness, and then when that happens those people are more likely to get severe disease and require hospitalization, explained Schaffner.
Stats also show low availability at ICUs in Tennessee, currently at 33 percent.
I think its a signal that we all need to be prudent and careful, advised Schaffner, Were opening up, but we ought to open up carefully.
Percent increase in hospitalizations since May 25th:Arkansas: 65.8%Arizona: 45.1%Mississippi: 3.5%North Carolina: 19.3%South Carolina: 6.6%Tennessee: 65.1%Texas: 10.5%Utah: 10.5%*Based on 7-day averages comparing week as of May 25 versus week as of June 8
SALISBURY For downtown restaurant owners and managers, its safe to say that 2020 has not been business as usual the past couple of months.
COVID-19 emerged in mid-March, and recently, a curfew for the downtown area set guidelines for business hours and the movement of people.
How are downtown businesses coping?
It hasnt been as bad as I thought it would be, said Justin Sides, catering manager at Smokepit.
There was a lot of uncertainty at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, as employers were faced with the shutdown and its effects on their business and their employees as well, said Larissa Harper, the executive director of Downtown Salisbury, Inc. (DSI). Nonetheless, a lot of our businesses downtown fared better than they thought, Harper said.
Phase two of Gov. Coopers reopening plan began May 22. Its expected to last until June 26. Under phase two, restaurants can operate dine-in at half capacity.
On Tuesday, Mayor Karen Alexander, meanwhile, rescinded a state of emergency that affected some downtown businesses, too. The curfew, which began June 2, was from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in the Downtown Municipal Services District.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Smokepit had to transition to take-out orders, Sides said. Even as the dining room as reopened, take-out orders have stayed high, he said.
COVID-19 is probably going to be around for a while, affecting the restaurant and its customers in the process, Sides said.
We just kind of have to accept and move forward with it, he said.
Jill Roth, the owner of Shuckin Shack Oyster Bar, said that they have included all CDC guidelines at the restaurant, including social distancing, sanitizing, 50% capacity, touchless temperature readings of staff, face masks of servers, etc., Roth said.
It was fairly easy to implement and our customers have been extremely understanding of the wait time and restrictions on 6 per table, as well as social distancing within and outside of the restaurant, Roth said.
The biggest difficulty for them has been getting necessary food in a time of shortages.
As the protests occurred in Salisbury in the previous couple of weeks, some business owners came to DSI to get advice on whether they might consider boarding up their windows, Harper said. DSI helped disseminate information from city and police officials to downtown stakeholders, she said.
For Go Burrito owner Mikey Wetzel, its not about the money as far as recent protests and his business go, he said.
Diversity has always been important to him as a business owner, he said. His staff is diverse and many are young as well. Some of them were nervous about getting home during the curfew after closing up Go Burrito for the day. If the doors closed at 9 p.m., they probably wouldnt actually be headed home until closer to 9:30 p.m., after the curfew hours.
We closed an hour early out of respect for the employees, he said. We just roll with the punches.
Go Burrito also has been allowing customers to put sticky notes on the front windows. Come put your own personal note on our window to show your support as we call for justice and change, a caption for a photo of the notes Facebook page reads.
Were happy to put our support behind it, Wetzel said of the protests.
During the curfew, Smokepit was closing early at 7 p.m. since it takes almost two hours to clean up after closing to customers, Sides said. That way, their employees could get out safety at 8:30 p.m.
We were able to dodge any huge obstacles, he said. We were happy with the outcome for us.
As far as the curfew goes, Roth also said that it was manageable. Shuckin Shack was already closing earlier to deal with food shortages and limiting the spread of COVID-19.
Harper thinks that downtown will surely bounce back from the curfew and COVID-19 overlapping. Many business-owners have used the time of transition and change during the shutdown and since to learn new skills, such as selling or marketing their products online, she said.
When the pandemic started, a lot of business owners also helped each other out, such as mentoring one another on how to fill out the small business loan application, Roth said.
From negative circumstances, positive things can happen, she said.
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Charles Kennedy
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Oil has had a turbulent year. Crude prices went negative for the first time in history, followed by one of the biggest rallies the industry has ever seen. And now, just when the market is starting to seem somewhat stable, COVID-19 strikes again.
A resurgence of COVID cases in the United States and a gloomy economic forecast from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has investors scrambling, with oil prices on track to hit their biggest daily decline since April 27th. Once again, oversupply and lack of demand have taken center stage.
Yesterday, the EIA reported that U.S. oil inventories rose by 5.7 million barrels, defying predictions of a 1.45 million barrel build. Adding even more pressure to oil prices, the U.S. Federal Reserve noted that unemployment rates were set to settle near 9.3% by the end of the year, adding that it could take years to return to pre-pandemic employment levels.
COVID-19 has been the main culprit in the market collapse. While many states have already reopened with some strict guidelines, things don't seem to be going as planned.
It took the United States nearly three months to hit the 1 million confirmed cases mark, yet it only to six weeks to double it. On Wednesday, the U.S. crossed the 2 million mark, with many states reporting significant spikes following attempts to ease lockdown restrictions.
Related: Bulls Beware: A Dark Cloud Is Forming Over Oil Markets
As of this morning, the U.S. has reported over 113,000 COVID-related deaths, and healthcare experts across the globe are warning that the pandemic is nowhere near over, encouraging individuals to maintain social-distancing practices and to wear face masks in public.
Though COVID-19 has taken a clear toll on global economies, some suggest the oil market, in particular, simply rose too quickly.
Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst, Asia-Pacific at OANDA said "The fall in oil prices is just as much about timing as COVID-19 cases though, coming as both equities and oil were looking overbought on any measure of short-term indicator," adding, "Some sort of correction had been overdue after the massive increase in speculative long positioning, and oil's breath-taking rally over the past month."
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has resulted in 10 days and nights of protests against racial injustice in major cities from California to Washington, DC, and Robert Redfield, MD, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told members of Congress yesterday that protesters need to get tested for COVID-19.
Redfield noted that D.C. and Minneapolistwo cities with the largest mass gatheringsstill have significant community spread.
"I do think there is a potential, unfortunately, for this to be a seeding event," Redfield said, according to the Washington Post. "And the way to minimize it is to have each individual to recognize it's to the advantage of them to protect their loved ones, to [say]: 'Hey, I was out. I need to go get tested.' You know, in three, five, seven days, go get tested. Make sure you're not infected."
The Minnesota Department of Health is urging testing for all protesters and anyone involved in subsequent cleanup efforts across the Twin Cities. State Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said anyone with symptoms should get tested, as well as asymptomatic people 5 to 7 days after attending a mass gathering. If those tests are negative, Malcom urges a retest at 12 to 14 days post-event.
Redfield made his comments during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. At the hearing he voiced concerns that CDC messaging on maintaining 6 feet of distance in public and wearing face coverings were not resonating with Americans, and pointed to pictures of crowds gathering at Memorial Day parties in Missouri and the recent SpaceX launch in Florida as evidence that Americans were not taking physical distancing seriously.
In addition to large crowds of people gathering, shouting, and marching shoulder to shoulder, the protests have led to a slew of arrests and the use of tear gas and pepper spray by police and the National Guard. Those factors may also contribute to a COVID-19 spike, experts said.
Sven Eric Jordt, PhD, a professor at Duke University who studies chemical irritants told National Public Radio that deploying tear gas during a respiratory pandemic is a recipe for disaster, as it produces forceful coughs, sneezes, tears, and running noses.
"Using it in the current situation with COVID-19 around is completely irresponsible," he told NPR. "There are sufficient data proving that tear gas can increase the susceptibility to pathogens, to viruses." Tear gas can also inflame respiratory passages, making them more susceptible to viruses.
And according to Politico, civil rights groups have already cited public health concerns in lawsuits filed against mass arrests during protests, which featured crowding protesters into vans, buses, and jail cells.
"The police tacticsthe kettling, the mass arrests, the use of chemical irritantsthose are completely opposed to public health recommendations," Malika Fair, director of Public Health Initiatives at the Association of American Medical Colleges, told Politico. "They're causing protesters to violate the six-feet recommendation. The chemicals may make them have to remove their masks. This is all very dangerous."
Yesterday Redfield also told Congress the nation needs 30,000 to 100,000 contact tracers working by September. Redfield said contact tracers could help prevent more stay-at-home orders if and when the virus appears during the late fall or early winter.
"It is fundamental that we have a fully operational contact tracing workforce that every single case, every single cluster, can do comprehensive contact tracing within 24 to 36 hours, 48 hours at the latest, get it completed, get it isolated, so that we can stay in containment mode as we get into the fall and winter of 2020," he told lawmakers.
The CDC readjusted its projection of potential COVID-19 fatalities, raising the number to 118,000 to 143,000 cumulative COVID-19 deaths by Jun 27. The projection is based on a collection of 20 models.
Amid criticism that the White House was not doing enough to understand or address COVID-19's impact on minority communities, the Trump administration announced yesterday it would require states to provide demographic information, including race and ethnicity, when reporting COVID-19 test results.
States must start providing the information by Aug 1. In many cities, including New York, New Orleans, Detroit, and Chicago, black and Hispanic patients have died at higher rates than white peers.
According to USA Today's COVID-19 tracker, the United States has a total of 1,888,370 cases and 108,813 deaths.
SoftBank says it tested 44,000 people for Covid-19 antibodies, more than any other Japanese company CNN
The United States may be seeing the beginning of a new wave of Covid-19 cases: Fourteen states and Puerto Rico have hit new seven-day average highs of new coronavirus infections, the Washington Post reports, Some of that may be due to increased testing (the more testing thats done, the more cases are found). But Arizona, in particular, is on high alert: ICU beds are filling up, and the states health director has told hospitals to start activating their emergency plans.
At the Atlantic, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal argue it looks like the United States is already giving up on public health measures. The White House coronavirus task force is barely meeting anymore. People are crowding together again in indoor casinos.
Also: The mass protests against police brutality and for racial justice could spread the virus further. (Many protesters know the risks and have thoughtful reasons for participating anyway.) Police have acted as though a pandemic isnt happening: forcing crowds into confined spaces, tear-gassing them, and jailing protesters in cramped cells.
Its much too soon to give up. The dangerousness of this virus, of this pandemic, hasnt changed. No matter what happens in the news over the next weeks and months, this will still be true.
The situation is not fundamentally all that different from six months ago, Sarah Cobey, an infectious disease modeler at the University of Chicago, says. We still have a highly transmissible virus, and the vast majority of the population remains susceptible to it. The situation is arguably even worse now since the virus is so much more widespread than it was a few months ago. Plus, now, as states relax social distancing policies, more people risk being exposed (unless they take the well-established precautions).
Heres what everyone needs to know about why the pandemic isnt going away, and why we cant give up fighting it.
Back in February, public health experts were worried about outbreaks igniting from travelers abroad returning to the United States. Now those sparks are everywhere in the United States.
If the coronavirus is a wildfire, then we humans are the trees, the fuel. In March and April, when most of the country was under some form of stay-at-home or lockdown order, most of us trees (except essential workers) were spread far apart from one another.
Now that states are allowing people to put themselves in closer proximity to others, the fire can more easily jump from person to person.
For the pandemic to simmer down naturally in a way that will allow life to go back to normal the population needs to achieve something called herd immunity. For the coronavirus, herd immunity could possibly be achieved when 50 percent of the population is immune. But it could be as high as 65 percent.
But no area is anywhere near that figure, even New York City, where at least 17,000 people have died of Covid-19. In late April, it was estimated that 20 percent of the city had been exposed to the coronavirus.
Elsewhere, the infection rates are much, much lower. Theres no evidence that theres some big accumulation of immunity in the population, Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, says, especially places that have avoided a big Covid-19 wave so far. Theres plenty more fuel for this fire.
Herd immunity cannot be achieved without a massive amount of pain and death. Fifty percent of the United States infected means 160 million infections. One in 200 of those could result in death. Thats 800,000 deaths. Weve already seen an enormity of pain and death, but even greater pain and death are possible.
In May, a team of Harvard scientists modeled how long it would take to achieve herd immunity in the US if the country was cautious and avoided overwhelming the hospital system. Prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022, they concluded.
Herd immunity is not the only way for the pandemic to end. We can manage the spread and contain it to small clusters with an aggressive system of testing and tracing the contacts of the infected.
This work is made difficult by the fact that people can spread the virus before they know they are sick. This virus is sneaky. We have so many infections that are undetected, Dean says. That will make it hard to contain.
But that challenge can be addressed. Weve seen clear examples of how transmission appears to be controllable with widespread testing and physical distancing, including mask-wearing, Cobey says. Look at South Korea, for example. If most people on the planet could take those precautions, perhaps the virus would go away.
In the absence of test-and-trace deployments, we can all do our best to try to reduce our chances of spreading the coronavirus to others: by wearing masks, by maintaining distancing between people, by avoiding crowds indoors, among other suggestions to reduce harm while rejoining society in a limited capacity.
It takes an average of five days for a person to show symptoms after being infected with Covid-19, but it can take up to 14. And after infection, it takes time to get tested and time for the results to come back.
Some people wont get tested, and their cases will only be noted when they arrive at a hospital. A person can be contagious a day or two before they start feeling symptoms (or never develop symptoms at all), and may remain contagious until several days after symptoms end.
This all means that by the time new cases start to appear in the data, a new wave of infections is already well underway. Lets not get complacent. The increase in cases in some communities now is the result of changes that began several weeks ago.
There is not yet a vaccine to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from infecting people. Even if there is eventually a vaccine to inoculate people against the coronavirus, the pandemic wont immediately end. It may not be perfectly effective, and there may not be enough of it.
Lets not lose sight of how it will take an enormous effort to end the pandemic. Humans have only eradicated two diseases via vaccine smallpox and a cattle disease called rinderpest and in both cases, it was the result of enormous global efforts. Dont imagine eradicating this virus will be any easier.
These new infections arent a surprise. Epidemiologists warned us that reopening too quickly could backfire. When we let up on precautions without putting new ones in place like a national test, trace, and isolation effort and universal masking the virus will find lots of new people to infect. The models told us this too: The places most at risk for a second wave are the places that largely avoided the first one (like Arizona), and didnt prepare well for a second. These places have populations that are almost entirely susceptible to infection. Removing the most powerful thing protecting them social distancing without new precautions in place just leaves them exposed.
The pandemic is still just beginning. Sigh if you need to. Screaming helps too (just not in an enclosed space with other people around). But we cant give up now.
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