"Mounting evidence suggests coronavirus is airborne - but health advice has not caught up":
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02058-1
"Coronavirus: WHO rethinking how Covid-19 spreads in air":
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53329946
I thought this could be a problem all along. For example, shopping in a store walking down an aisle that someone just left for example. This is why masks are so important to reduce people from spreading it.
As a reminder, we're probably still hardly into this pandemic. This coronavirus will still likely be much worse than it is now in the fall and winter, when hospitals will already have a lot more people due to the seasonal flu, so it's still going to be unimaginable then. Some hospitals are already full and sending people to other hospitals. Some people in Arizona might have to eventually be sent to another state.
https://tucson.com/news/local/covid-19-patients-in-tucson-being-transferred-to-phoenix-out-of-state/article_9eb4cfb1-a1cb-5466-82b3-e23829be35ff.html
Considering Trump wants the schools open starting next month, or he'll possibly try to withhold funding somehow, things are likely to be even worse. (not that he has the power to do that, but he can get some governors to do his bidding, like Florida's governor) 130,000 dead Americans hasn't been enough for him yet.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/politics/school-funding-jobs-trump-education/index.html
While kids die at a significantly lower rate than older people and people of all ages with underlying conditions, they spread it, to teachers, their parents, their siblings, their grandparents and others.
And of course, younger people do end up in hospitals too. They are just more likely to live. 99% of the cases aren't harmless like Trump claimed. I don't know what the number is now, but in March the WHO said "Around 1 in every 5 people who are infected with COVID-19 develop difficulty in breathing and require hospital care." (from: https://www.who.int/indonesia/news/detail/08-03-2020-knowing-the-risk-for-covid-19) That is for all ages, so younger people would be hospitalized less. But it can be serious. And we continue to learn about the long term damage the virus can do to people, including kids.
Only a small percent of the population is infected with this virus right now. For confirmed cases, a little less than 1% of the U.S. population has been infected. Multiply that number by several times, assuming millions more likely have it, and you can see that the vast majority still don't. The average age of people testing positive has decreased, which is part of the reason why the daily number of deaths is lower right now. Some are going out and taking risks more than older people. The other reason, there is a lag in the death toll. People get it, they test positive, they may end up in the hospital, and then some of them die. That process can be a month or more. We're seeing the number of cases go up, now at record highs nationally. We are seeing hospitalizations rise. We are likely to see deaths rise too, though with more younger people testing positive it might not rise to the level we saw previously as soon as it would if older people were getting it at a higher rate. We probably will get back to the levels we did by the fall, especially counting excess deaths. It's not going to get better than it is right now.
At this point, testing, contact tracing and quarantining can't get us where we need to be. Everyone needs to wear a mask and it would help. But in reality, we need to shut things down again in a lot of places, but that is unlikely until we get to the point where hospitals are truly full, beyond surge capacity, and people can't be transferred to get care. When people who otherwise may have lived start dying because they can't be treated, and doctors have to make the decision of who to sacrifice, like those that are older and have other significant health problems, we may then start shutting things down again. Some governors might sooner, but in some places that is likely what it will take and by then you will have many weeks of truly horrific conditions before the impact of shutting things down has an impact. I do think we will get to that point in places, most likely in the fall with flu around too.
There are more people spreading the virus around than ever before in most all areas, other than some places like New York. People need to remain extremely cautious. Maybe by the spring or summer of 2021 things will get better. Hopefully some kind of vaccine will lessen the number of people who get the virus if a vaccine starts becoming widely available by then. Everyone should be wearing a mask and only doing what they need to be doing. And even doing what you need to do, be extremely careful. Six feet of distance between people certainly isn't enough in some cases. Just try to avoid being around people as much as you can when out. |