Latrinsorm
07-30-2020, 05:07 PM
There's been a lot of talk of plateaus regarding coronavirus, and plateaus are nice and reassuring - the case (or death or hospitalization or whatever) rate will proceed along at the given level, then some point drop straight down to zero.
However, this is not how the real world works. We are manufacturing vaccines before we know whether they'll work or not, which is great! But we are not administering them, and that administration takes significant time. The estimate I've seen for vaccinating the United States is nine months, and that does not take into consideration the increasingly likely scenario that we'll need boosters well before those nine months are up. But let's say it does take nine months and everyone gets permanent immunity - all those people at the end of the line still get exposed to the virus throughout those nine months, so rather than going straight down to zero like a plateau what we'll actually see is a diagonal line down and to the right, or a trapezoid. (Once we reach herd immunity there will be superlinear decline but a rounded trapezoid is still much closer to a trapezoid than a plateau.)
So what?
So if we assume a plateau until the vaccine is discovered and gets FDA approval near the end of the year, then a linear decline for another 9 months, we can very easily see how critical the start of our plateau is. You want examples? I've got examples.
On June 26th the seven day average of deaths in the United States was 542 and the total number of deaths were 115,321 per Wikipedia. (Feel free to substitute your own source's values throughout this exercise!) There were 188 days left in 2020, so 188 * 542, then a triangle with height 542 and base 9 * 30 for total additional deaths of 542 * 9 * 30 / 2, all for a grand total of 290,249 coronavirus deaths in the United States.
On July 26th the average was 1063 and the total was 135,838. At that point of course there were only 158 days left, so 158 * 1063 + 1063 * 9 * 30 / 2 makes for a grand total of 447,297 coronavirus deaths in the United States, an increase of over 150,000.
.
Obviously we know that in the real world the United States is going to start seeing a decline in a few weeks (due to new cases starting to decline) and going to start seeing another incline in a month or two (due to more rushed reopenings, especially of schools). My point is that even if you think we're plateauing at any given moment, where specifically we plateau is critically important.
However, this is not how the real world works. We are manufacturing vaccines before we know whether they'll work or not, which is great! But we are not administering them, and that administration takes significant time. The estimate I've seen for vaccinating the United States is nine months, and that does not take into consideration the increasingly likely scenario that we'll need boosters well before those nine months are up. But let's say it does take nine months and everyone gets permanent immunity - all those people at the end of the line still get exposed to the virus throughout those nine months, so rather than going straight down to zero like a plateau what we'll actually see is a diagonal line down and to the right, or a trapezoid. (Once we reach herd immunity there will be superlinear decline but a rounded trapezoid is still much closer to a trapezoid than a plateau.)
So what?
So if we assume a plateau until the vaccine is discovered and gets FDA approval near the end of the year, then a linear decline for another 9 months, we can very easily see how critical the start of our plateau is. You want examples? I've got examples.
On June 26th the seven day average of deaths in the United States was 542 and the total number of deaths were 115,321 per Wikipedia. (Feel free to substitute your own source's values throughout this exercise!) There were 188 days left in 2020, so 188 * 542, then a triangle with height 542 and base 9 * 30 for total additional deaths of 542 * 9 * 30 / 2, all for a grand total of 290,249 coronavirus deaths in the United States.
On July 26th the average was 1063 and the total was 135,838. At that point of course there were only 158 days left, so 158 * 1063 + 1063 * 9 * 30 / 2 makes for a grand total of 447,297 coronavirus deaths in the United States, an increase of over 150,000.
.
Obviously we know that in the real world the United States is going to start seeing a decline in a few weeks (due to new cases starting to decline) and going to start seeing another incline in a month or two (due to more rushed reopenings, especially of schools). My point is that even if you think we're plateauing at any given moment, where specifically we plateau is critically important.