Poll: What % of US population will contract Covid-19?

[Muse]

On the OP question, surely it will keep spreading till we achieve 'herd immunity', either via a vaccine or via unconstrained spread. If the latter, it's generally said that such immunity effect only kicks in at 60-70% infection level (sadly, I don't know of a clip of an actor of Oldman's caliber screaming '60 to 70 percent!').

But if something smart is done to suppress the spread (as South Korea has done?) then maybe it won't get to that point before we get a vaccine?

I first encountered a decent explanation of herd immunity with respect to covid-19 in this Wired Magazine article, being interview of Dr. Larry Brilliant. It's from a while back but it's great. He was the chief consultant for Contagion and is quite expert.

The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who warned of pandemic in 2006, says we can beat the novel coronavirus—but first, we need lots more testing.

www.wired.com

That means, A, a large enough quantity of us have caught the disease and become immune. And B, we have a vaccine. The combination of A plus B is enough to create herd immunity, which is around 70 or 80 percent.

 

[pcgeek11]

That 'case fatality' figure is probably the least useful figure of all, as it combines two very questionable numbers.

Sure, the UK is doing really badly on deaths-per-capita. But then our government is roughly as crap as yours is (it just speaks more coherently and also knows Latin). I expect both to turn out pretty badly.

I don't think you can scientifically judge anything in terms of comparisons from the available data now. But my subjective impression is the Trump admin has no clue what it is doing and the US has even worse underlying socio-political problems, that will hamper it's ability to fight the virus, than even we do. Though at least you have a lower-level of government that is capable of acting semi-independently of the incompetents at the top.

That is pretty much what I said in my several posts...

 

[highland145]

That is pretty much what I said in my several posts...

Unless you're the ded guy.

😨