[12elephant]

What no one is talking about is how much social distancing/isolation is needed to avoid hospital saturation.

I ran the numbers for Canada, and it looks like we'd need isolation measures for 2+ years.

I don't see how that's a feasible solution long-term.

[nicoburns]

The numbers I ran for the UK put it at 12 years:

No. People in UK: ~66,000,000

Est. proportion of people who will get sick: 80%

Est. proportion of sick people who require intensive care: 5% (in Italy it's 10%)

So that's 60,000,0000.80.05 = 2,640,000

Number of ICU beds in the UK: ~4100 (90% occupied, but let's ignore that for now)

Length of time ICU required: at least 1 week (probably longer, but let's ignore that too)

So that's 2,640,000 / 4100 = 644 weeks or 12 years that we would need to spread the cases over in order to have enough capacity.

[Engineering-MD]

I did a similar calculation but came back more optimistically (although still on scale of a year to two).

You only need count over 18s as very few cases in this group. It is believed by the UK experts to have a lower fatality rate of 1% and likely lower admission rate due to asymptomatic infections (estimates at 16-75%). Ventilator capacity can increase with stopping surgery and CPAP/other measures can be used in some cases. Treatments developed later should improve efficiency of treatment. Extra ventilators should be manufactured and help ease burden. I think 80% is too high, likely more 60% given an R0 of 2-3. Finally, the chronically unwel elderly are unlikely to benefit from ITU care significantly and would never qualify. With these exceptions it gets down to 1-2 years depending on assumptions.

[jamesrcole]

Around 18 months (until sufficient quantities of vaccine) is this group of experts’ estimate

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

[jamesrcole]

Around 18 months (until sufficient quantities of vaccine) is this group of experts’ estimate

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

[blobster]

It's likely that we'll have a vaccine or at least some kind of treatment by the end of the year, so this should improve the prospects quite a bit.

[Loughla]

So, wild speculation aside, what numbers did you use to base your model on, and what is your qualification to do anything like that?

[jtbayly]

I'd like to see more discussion around this point. I don't care where you got the numbers from. It's been clear from a glance that 3 weeks of cancelled school isn't going to do anything. So now we're looking at 8 weeks. Umm.... According to what? Which is more likely, 8 weeks or 2 years? I don't know, but I'm guessing 8 weeks isn't nearly long enough.

[jamesrcole]

Around 18 months (until sufficient quantities of vaccine) is this group of experts’ estimate

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

[dragonwriter]

> What no one is talking about is how much social distancing/isolation is needed to avoid hospital saturation.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

People are talking about it, that talk is driving policy, and the answer is “with some local adjustments possible based on caseload, until there is an effective vaccine developed and deployed, which will probably be 18+ months”, and the alternative is a truly catastrophic number of fatalities.

[garmaine]

Did you factor in an asymptomatic rate?

[jamesrcole]

Around 18 months (until sufficient quantities of vaccine) is this group of experts’ estimate

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...