Great piece exploring the question many of us are obsessing over right now: Why do some places become coronavirus hot spots, and others — even when they have more vulnerable populations, and slower political responses — don't? vox.com/2020/4/21/2122…
There's a lot in the piece, but something my conversations on this have me thinking a lot about is the interaction of timing and seeding. In particular, our early understanding of COVID-19 was built on places where the disease was seeded before health systems were looking for it.
One thing I think is possible now — and a reason behind some model revision — is that we know what we're looking for, and our interventions are pretty effective, even without the testing we wish we had.
The problem that no one quite knows how to solve yet is those interventions are economically ruinous, and we haven't set up the testing, surveillance, and tracing necessary to replace them with something softer.
