How to Explain COVID to Anyone...

We have learned a lot from countries that were hit 1st. I’ve seen a lot of concern on Social Media about availability of early COVID testing. Early testing was a strategy designed around containment. We learned from other countries that containment wasn’t practical or even possible. We quickly went to social distancing and cancellation of groups larger than 250 people. Social distancing is the only effective way of slowing the spread since we can’t stop it from spreading.

This next part is where I see the most confusion. 60-70% will be the estimated infection rate around the world before herd immunity is reached. Herd immunity occurs because once infected then recovered your odds are severally reduced that you will re-catch and spread it further. It sounds good to reach herd immunity quickly. However, with this virus we want to hold off hitting herd immunity as long as we can. We already know 60-70% of us will be infected at some point. The goal now is for that to occur over the next year and not in the next couple of months. If we infect too quickly then hospital systems will reach capacity. When hospitals hit capacity is when very hard decisions have to be made about who gets treated and who doesn’t. Social distancing is our best defense.

The goal of social distancing is to slow the spread down so we do not reach hospital capacity in any area. This gives hospitals the capacity to treat everyone that enters.

The graph below shows this better. Same number of people in both curves are infected...the blue one is just over a longer period of time.

The problem with early testing is people still think this is about whether or not they are infected. If you can be infected you WILL be...our population just needs those infections spread over a longer period of time.

For those who love graphs and numbers here is great source... https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

I hope this helps...