I gathered the same thing. Basically the gist is, if we can develop a cheap, fast, and effective test for COVID-19 then we can test everywhere and re-open everything.
[1]: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-learning-how-to-d...
It also feels like the logical next step to the very widespread testing found in countries like South Korea.
I think this is the best position, however but it still needs to be argued for since it's not the only position.
Edit: Also, it looks like the US has plateaued at this point but in a situation with a fairly dysfunctional testing arrangement. It is going to be hard to argue for people to sit tight until tests are in place so I'm not terribly optimistic.
Huh? One goal is to flatten the curve so that we don't have exponential growth. Another is to flatten the curve so much that, even if might still be exponential growth, the growth is slow enough for our health care systems to absorb the peak.
The aim of mitigating measures is reducing the growth rate of the disease. But the mechanism of the disease is that you generally have a basic situation where X people infect at time t results R*X people at time t+1. That's fundamentally exponential process (even though you can extra factors, the process doesn't change 'till you get close to having infected everyone). If we can make R small enough, this become exponential decay, a good thing but still an exponential process. But when you do exponential growth. you have a doubling and on the last double, you get more cases than all the cases combines. So the peak is just MUCH higher than the rest of the curve and you can "flatten" a lot and still wind-up overwhelmed in the end if the growth process continues.
Just to nitpick a little here, it's more like "flatten the curve - stretch the time while everyone gets it, so we don't overwhelm hospitals". Even with exponential growth, you would rather deal with it over a longer period than have a massive spike where all services are overwhelmed.
Which is to say, you can stretch out exponential growth a lot and still not have enough. If you exponential growth from 1,000 to 1,000,000 cases over a year, the last month will overwhelm your services entirely and constitute the bulk of both cases and death.
There's a reason all those early graphs showed parabolas, not actual exponential curves, you can't even give plausible visual representation of this process, because it isn't plausible.
The Norwegian health authorities also published an app that can be voluntarily downloaded, that tracks and warns about infected, while also collecting research data for future use. [2] The app has garnered some criticism for leaking user data, and for discharging the battery too quickly. The retort is that it's of course voluntary and anonymous, and that it's actually tracking less data than Facebook or Google.
[1]: https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2020/04/from-thousands-of-t...
[2]: Norwegian language source: https://www.fhi.no/nyheter/2020/ny-app-fra-folkehelseinstitu...
Relevant part of their tweet:
"This applies if you are staying in a country with poorly developed health services and infrastructure and/or collective infrastructure, for example the USA. The same applies if you do not have health insurance."
As well as a message, now apparently removed but archived by others, on their website:
"This also applies for countries with poorly developed collective infrastructure, for example the USA, where it can be difficult to get transport to the airport if you don’t have a car. The same applies if you don’t have health insurance."
> We need to start building social distancing into our culture the same way we built protection for sex into our culture.
While I agree with the general gist of your comment, I should emphasize that what we need is physical-distancing, not social. Humans are social beings at core, and depriving them of social interactions is as deadly as the virus itself. What we should be practicing more than ever before is washing our hands, minding our coughs, and in general, being responsible to the society. The individualistic lifestyle - which is pretty much dominant in the West - shouldn't stop us from caring about our community as a whole and our duties towards other people. Technology can only help us get so far; the rest depends on how much we - as responsible social beings - take care of ourselves and each other.
Good distinction. We should be focusing more on hygiene while finding ways to connect remotely with the people who are important to us.
Good stop-gap, but not remotely viable long-term. Humans aren't made for isolation, even if video calls help take the edge off soon. FaceTime and Zoom have a significant cognitive load, too. As long as we're talking about how society should adapt to this sort of risk, we can't just go to living in individual hermetic pods with internet connections. The mental health cost will be monstrous.
Why the cogntive load would be lesser in a face to face conversation than digital assuming the internet connectivity is good ?
- Henry David Thoreau