March 26, 2020

Militaries will be the 1st to create units of infected-&-recovered, therefore immune, troops.

And will deploy them in the place of units containing any personnel who have not yet contracred and recovered from covid. (Until, of course, such time as immunity by vaccination becomes available. Then vaccinating all troops will replace this stop-gap strategy.)

Significant numbers of such soldiers who are deployable anywhere should start becoming available within just a few months.

Germany's top epidemiologist, not beholden to our political pressure here to soft-peddle grim realities, says no vaccine is likely until 2021. He projects that 60% to 70% of Germans will get covid-19. There will be the %'s of deaths that we all are starting to learn. But, of course, the vast majority will beat the disease from adequately to very well, and come out on the other side both immune and non-infectious to others. Those people will reach 60 to 70% of national populations, at which point herd immunity will reduce the risk to the remaining 30 or 40%. Meanwhile more effective treatments will be developed to help those seriously stricken with covid to survive at higher rates. (To the extent, that is, that hospitals are able to help with the new treatments the large numbers who will be stricken.)

The above, Germany's top epidemiologist thinks, will probably be how covid-19 plays out. And I notice I don't hear many other experts stepping up and explicitly arguing otherwise.

If this is to be the case, it will become increasingly apparent to all that herd immunity from the immune-through-contraction is our course. And that those growing numbers of people will also be the people biologically best suited to start getting our world moving back towards fully operating again.

Immune and non-infectious citizens and employees are what the whole world needs. If the German epidemiologist is correct, majorities of nations' populations are going to become just that, before a vaccine is available, through immunity by infection-and-recovery.

Militaries are all about readiness to meet threats. They vigorously pursue the lowest possible mortality for their own troops. They employ many strategists and planners. And personnel-wise are best suited to adjust in this manner. So I expect militaries, ours and others, to jump on this concept earliest. Both out of necessity, and because troops are young, healthy, and will pass through their coming covid infections safely at the highest rates.


(The medical world would be 1st to institute such a shift IF they had enough personnel to progressively phase their still-susceptible staff out of contact with patients. But their "front line" is the whole globe right now, and they have very insufficient "troops" fighting the covid war already. They just won't be able to pull non-immune doctors, nurses, techs and aides off of those front lines. For them this will remain an "all hands, plus" struggle until it's nearly over.)

March 16, 2020

I read one blog I thought may be right. That, mathematically,

on the Flattening The Curve graph, America could successfully flatten it below the "no measures" scenario peak by 4/5... drive it 80% lower, and we'll still run out of ICU beds and ventilators even at that much flatter peak.

I think that's the reality hospital staffs understand, too. And correctly fear.


After this pandemic is over, let's not forget to return to the issue of why the number of hospital beds in America has fallen so tragically low: 25+ years of our free-market, profit-seeking health insurance industry pushing the insured out of inpatient care early. Often dangerously early -- in the 2000s a co-worker of mine died from that practice.

Turning inpatients into outpatients has been a real profit-center for insurers, though!

And of course driven down the number of hospital beds that exist.

March 15, 2020

Flatten The Curve is also Trump's intention for public knowledge of what's happening with covid-19.

You've learned about Flattening The Curve of covid-19 transmission by now.

The defense actually has more than one application in the U.S. currently: Politically for Trump's self-preservation purposes, in addition to epidemiologically for legitimate and positive purposes.

If even absolutely horrendous truths come out only slowly (Russia attacked our 2016 election for Trump; Trump sacrificed an ally's soldiers' lives extorting Ukraine to smear Biden; Russia is attacking our 2020 election for Trump) and their proofs are dispersed over enough time, their power gets dissipated. And by ranting 100 denials a day the whole time Trump believes he can survive them... that he can survive ANYthing.

Just flatten that bad news curve until the public wears out on it.

Now we can even graph the tactic. Starting with the viral transmission graph above:

* Re-label the Y (vertical) axis as

"American public's point of understanding of what we're in store for with covid-19". Including how we could and should have been better prepared.


* Re-label the area under the tall curve as

"with timely and truthful information from the Trump Admin."


* Re-label the area under the flattened curve as

"with constant deception, lies, distortions, and evasions from the Trump Admin. and its rightwing propaganda allies"


* Re-label the dashed horizontal line as

"public's capacity for tolerating a president's deadly incompetence, dishonesty, and ignorance"


Voila. Another flattening-the-curve effort currently underway. By slowing down and spreading out the public's realization of what's actually happening, Trump selfishly (what's new?) gives the higher priority to his own hopes to politically survive covid-19. Even though the stifling of the full truth has already cost some Americans their lives, and is going to cost a lot more.

This requires gall. But this is the Trump Administration. Sheri Fink's new story in the New York Times reports that VP Mike Pence's office, tasked with LEADING America's covid-19 response, is denying even KNOWING the CDC's now month-old projections of 4 possible covid-19 scenarios in America and their range of projected mortality.

SLOWING DOWN the speed of dissemination of covid-19 knowledge -- Flattening the American Public's Understanding Curve of where this is headed -- obviously is one of this administration's top goals in this crisis.

It is one of Trump's sociopathically irresponsible, and, he must desperately believe, ONLY hopes for getting re-electoralcolleged in December. (After, of course, losing the vote itself again in November.)