https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperi ... 3-2020.pdf
Umm, don't know what to say about this, but guess I'll go take my xanax now
Edit: Here's a thread reader of someone who broke the above report down. Hope this is wrong in every possible way
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239 ... 57696.html
Here is the summery of the above report (format sucks when copy and paste. Sorry):
Summary
The global impact of COVID-19 has been profound, and the public health threat it represents is the
most serious seen in a respiratory virus since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Here we present the
results of epidemiological modelling which has informed policymaking in the UK and other countries
in recent weeks. In the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine, we assess the potential role of a number of
public health measures – so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – aimed at reducing
contact rates in the population and thereby reducing transmission of the virus. In the results presented
here, we apply a previously published microsimulation model to two countries: the UK (Great Britain
specifically) and the US. We conclude that the effectiveness of any one intervention in isolation is likely
to be limited, requiring multiple interventions to be combined to have a substantial impact on
transmission.
Two fundamental strategies are possible: (a) mitigation, which focuses on slowing but not necessarily
stopping epidemic spread – reducing peak healthcare demand while protecting those most at risk of
severe disease from infection, and (b) suppression, which aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing
case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely. Each policy has major
challenges. We find that that optimal mitigation policies (combining home isolation of suspect cases,
home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the
elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and
deaths by half. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of
thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many
times over. For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option.
We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social
distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family
members. This may need to be supplemented by school and university closures, though it should be
recognised that such closures may have negative impacts on health systems due to increased
16 March 2020 Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25561/77482 Page 2 of 20
absenteeism. The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package –
or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a
vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) – given that we predict that transmission
will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed. We show that intermittent social distancing –
triggered by trends in disease surveillance – may allow interventions to be relaxed temporarily in
relative short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers
rebound. Last, while experience in China and now South Korea show that suppression is possible in
the short term, it remains to be seen whether it is possible long-term, and whether the social and
economic costs of the interventions adopted thus far can be reduced.