QuoteJed,
At what time does the 1.3 exponent start to decrease in other countries?
In China, it started to decline drastically two days after the lockdown began, on January 23. See Chart 7:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo…ple-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
This was extraordinarily effective. Much more than experts such as Aylward thought it could be. The Chinese also used the internet and other high tech method to track down nearly every case, and to quarantine anyone who had come in contact with the sick person. The most important thing they did was widespread testing, so they knew who to quarantine, and they knew how far the epidemic had spread, and approximately how many hidden cases there were.
In Korea and Japan, the authorities paid close attention to events in China. Korea began to experience an exponential increase, mainly from one concentrated group. They quickly implemented mass testing, following up of cases, and quarantines, but not travel restrictions. They stopped the exponential increase by Feb. 29. They have had very few deaths, and most patients have recovered. They are now getting about 100 new cases a day, with 50 patients in intensive care.
https://www.worldometers.info/…irus/country/south-korea/
The number in intensive care is not increasing, so they can manage that level indefinitely, without anything like the triage in Italy. Here is what happens with triage:
". . . a manager in the Lombardy health care system, among the most advanced and well-funded in Europe, [saw] anesthesiologists weeping in the hospital hallways because of the choices they are going to have to make."
https://www.bostonglobe.com/20…taly-dont-do-what-we-did/
In Japan they have traced every single patient, and quarantined everyone they came in contact with. They closed the schools. They made it possible for working people to stay home by paying 70% workers comp. The epidemic never began an exponential growth. There have been ~40 cases per day for the last several weeks, and 35 cases today. There are now 36 people in intensive care. They can easily sustain this level for as long as it takes to develop a vaccine.
In other words, China, Korea and Japan have brought the pandemic under control, with little loss of life. It is very unlikely the Korean and Japanese hospital systems will be overwhelmed, which means there will be no unnessary loss of life because patients cannot be treated. Patients suffering from other diseases will also be taken care of. This is a triumph of applied public health. In my opinion, it is the most extraordinary event in the history of public health, made possible only by modern communication and computer technology. When the internet was first made, who imagined that a generation later it save millions of lives? This is what make science and technology so wonderful.
Unfortunately, the lessons learned in Asia were largely ignored in Europe. The only thing they did right was to test large numbers of people. Let us hope that the lockdown in Italy works, because if it does not, there is not much else they can do to avoid about a thousand times more patients over the next several months. This may cause roughly as many deaths per capita as the 1918 influenza pandemic, because modern medicine does you no good when the medicine is not available and the doctors and nurses are busy with other patients, or dead. We are in the same boat as our grandparents were 102 years ago, when we cannot access 21st century medical care.
The EU did learn something from Asia. I think it is now apparent that in the U.S., officials and leaders such as Trump learned nothing, and did nothing. Only a few thousand test kits have been deployed, and there is no telling when more will be available. As far as I know, there is nothing like the internet-based reporting and monitoring systems that China and Japan use to track patients. Such a system could have been devised in a few weeks, but it was not. There has been no stockpiling of medical supplies. Hi tech masks should have been confiscated from the civilian market and saved for medical professionals, but this was not done. Individual hospitals have made preparations, but the government has done nothing -- as far as I know from Congressional testimony and other authoritative sources. I cannot tell because the Trump administration has classified all discussions and data as "top secret," as if this were a war, instead of a medical problem. That is unprecedented in the history of public health.
As a result of this negligence, it is likely that millions of Americans will be infected, and hundreds of thousands will die. All unnecessarily. We could have limited the number of deaths to a few thousand. In Japan, 814 have died, and only a few more die every day. There will probably be fewer than 2,000 deaths total by next year when a vaccine should become available.
When the Chinese stopped the exponential growth in January, the Japanese mass media and government took notice immediately. Since I watch Japanese TV I knew about it. When the Japanese successfully implemented these same strategies (at no cost to democratic freedom) I assumed the worst of this crisis was over. I assumed that the EU and U.S. would follow, and implement similar measures. But they did nothing. I have lived though lot of terrible history, in Vietnam and elsewhere. I was born just after WWII, but friends and relatives of mine fought on both sides, and were victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. I have seen much, and read far more. But now, when I see it is likely that hundreds of thousands of Americans will die for no reason, I never been more shocked and appalled in my life. If hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions die, it will be the worst thing that has happened in our history. Even worse than the Civil War, because at least that had a purpose, and it freed the slaves.
As Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute put it: "This is an unmitigated disaster that the administration has brought upon the population, and I don’t say this lightly. We have had a much worse response than Iran, than Italy, than China."
