1/ THREAD about new evidence C19 may have been spreading in the U.S. longer than believed and what it means (and doesn't mean) for transmission, fatality and what should happen next in terms of re-opening things...and how the right will misuse this information
2/ So, today it was reported that autopsies performed on two people who died in early to mid Feb in CA suggest C19 as a cause, meaning transmission/infection occurred earlier than believed...indeed, CDC data on pneumonia deaths in Jan/Feb were suggesting that as well...
3/ ..namely, that this thing could have been here before we knew it was, being spread at the community level, and that deaths were being thought of as seasonal flu or other pneumonia deaths. So, what does this mean? A few things...
4/ The C19 deniers and "re-open" militias will no doubt seize on this as proof the virus wasn't that deadly. After all, if people were dying earlier that means millions more were infected than we knew, meaning the fatality rate is well lower than believed...this is true. But...
5/ ...couple problems: 1) even if it's only 0.2 or 0.3, that's still 2-3x the rate of seasonal flu, so it's a big deal, AND, 2) if millions more had it than we thought, even though most recovered, the R-nought (transmissibility rate) must be MUCH higher than believed too...
6/ ...this matters greatly. The r-nought tells us how many people will be infected by a typical infected person. The higher the number the greater the risk and the higher the % who need to be immune (either from vax or exposure/antibodies) to get to herd immunity...
7/ For measles, for instance, with R-nought of something like 14, herd immunity requires something like 95% of people to be immune, which is why anti-vaxxers are so damned dangerous when it comes to that vaccine in particular. For C19, when we thought it was R-nought of 2...
8/..folks were saying we'd need around a third of the population to be immune to get benefits of herd immunity sufficient to flatten the curve. But if there are 10-20 or 50x more who had it than we know, then the R-nought is well above 2, meaning we might need 1/2 to 2/3...
9/...to be immune either from exposure/antibodies or a vaccine, before the curve is truly flattened. To get there via vaccine is gonna take 12-18 months. To get there via mass exposure can happen by opening back up, but if that happens, tens of millions will contract....
10/...and even with a relatively low fatality rate, a couple hundred thousand would likely die, with even more hospitalized at great cost to the economy/health delivery system etc...So we get mass death AND economic devastation too...
11/...as opposed to staying largely on shut down and flattening it that way, while calling on the government to support folks thru the crisis...which some oppose simply bc they are more wedded to their economic hyper-capitalist orthodoxy than to life or science....
12/...they would rather let people die AND crater the economy again (which would happen with a massive second wave bc markets would tank and people would be really afraid to go out and work), just to prevent massive state intervention, bc they fear the precedent it would set...
13/...ever since the depression they've been angry that FDR pulled us out of that with Keynesian spending and government action rather than letting the markets and monetary policy handle everything...they have wanted to roll back the 20th century safety nets created then...
14/...for the past 50 years. They've chipped away at many of them and the logic that underlies them already...now they fear that "oh my God, if the state pulls us out of this, it will cement a more progressive mindset for generations," so they will do anything to avoid that...
15/...even sacrificing lives and the economy itself, after which they would say "see, the state can't solve these problems...we tried and it failed." Even though really it was the paucity of the government intervention that would be to blame...
16/...our unwillingness to do what, say, Denmark did, which is pay people the equivalent of 52k US dollars a year to stay home and not work, until the crisis passed. We could do far more like this, but not without wrecking the right wing hyper-capitalist world view....
17/ They will ignore the science, and the economics of this thing just to keep faith with their cultish devotion to the market, just as they have done for years with their disproved belief that tax cuts increase general revenues, lead to job creation, etc....
18/ So yes, the new evidence is great news for fatality rates, but bad news for infection rates and possible reach of the virus...and let's be honest...
19/ Risk of infection HAS to figure into what we do, even short of fatality numbers. Think about it. Imagine two societies. The first has a weird virus going around. Luckily only 1 in 1000 people will end up getting it but 1/2 of these die....
20/...the second has a virus too, but far less lethal. Only 1 in 1000 infected die, 1 in 100 are hospitalized, 10% are really sick but can stay at home to get well, and the other 90% are asymptomatic. But let's say your odds of getting it are 35% or 50% bc of the r-nought...
21/...which of these societies would you rather be in right now? In which would you feel safer? No doubt the first, right? In the first, if it were the US, 162.5k die. In the second, between 113,750 and 162,500 do, so not much different, and possibly the exact same. However...
22/...in thinking about risk it isn't just risk of dying IF you get the virus, it's whether you think there's any real chance of getting it. Well, in the real world, if the C19 r-nought is what it appears it might end up being (presuming so many more had it than we knew)...
23/ we would be more like the second society IF we open back up too soon. Transmission will explode, infection will explode, most will survive but at HUGE cost to the economy and health systems anyway...thus even the supposed benefit of doing this is erased...
24/ At the end of the day it is not a choice between the economy/jobs/income with "acceptable losses" of life OR stay shut with devastating losses to the economy ...it is whether we want to act in solidarity w/one another based on science, shared values & compassion...END
