[cliffy]

Of course you're some newly created sock-puppet account too afraid to post under your real handle.

COVID-19 will absolutely cause the death of millions in the US alone if proper steps aren't taken to reduce R0. If not from the disease itself, then from hospitals being completely overloaded.

Edit: Let's be real: lockdown/isolation is going to have to persist for at least a month or more to have a real chance of preventing the spread to most of the population in the US. 2 weeks is not going to cut it.

[9uq34aofgh]

Not a sock-puppet.

Where's the evidence isolations will flatten the curve and not just cause another spike of cases after isolation ends?

Covid-19 isn't going to die out after a few weeks or months.

Deaths are coming from ages 70+ with severe pre-existing conditions during non-peak hospital conditions. This is normal and nothing to panic about.

Also, do R0 values of a virus change dramatically? I thought they were set based the number of non-vaccinated people who get infected...

[cliffy]

"R0 is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population." [0]

If we hold R0 down long enough through change of behavior then we can absolutely flatten the curve.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

[9uq34aofgh]

Thanks for the info on R0!

From wiki "What these thresholds will do is determine whether a disease will die out (if R0 < 1) or whether it may become epidemic (if R0 > 1), but they generally can not compare different diseases."

If seasonal flu (type-B?) has an R0 of ~1.3 can we reasonably call seasonal flu an epidemic?

H1N1 (spanish and swine flu) is ~1.8 and had major outbreaks in 1918 and 2009.

Is it realistic to expect we can sufficiently influence covid-19 using NPIs to achieve R0 < 1?