"Flattening the Curve" Has Nothing To Do With Getting Back to Business As Usual
by John Lawrence, April 13, 2020
There has been so much talk about flattening the curve that you would think that that would be all that's necessary to get back to business as usual. That's not the case. Flattening the curve has to do with hospitals not being any more overwhelmed than they are if there were to be a spike rather than a flattening. It doesn't mean that the pandemic is under control even if the number of reported cases goes down. What that means is that the mitigation measures of social distancing are working. Once you stop the mitigation, the cases will start going up again, even spiking.
Let's look at it this way. So far there have been about 500,000 reported cases of coronavirus. Let's double that to take into account unreported cases. Let's assume that all of those people have recovered, which is obviously not the case, and so there are one million people with antibodies who are not susceptible to getting the coronavirus again. That means that 1/360 of the American people have no antibodies and are susceptible to getting the coronavirus as long as there are still carriers, symptomatic or asymptomatic, out there, and nobody knows how many there are. If even 1/360 of the American people are carriers, that means there are one million people out there with acvtive coronavirus and we know it is very contagious.
So what do we do? We need to continue social distancing because we know it is working. Without doing it, the numbers of cases will spike again. We know that the 1918 Spanish flu had three spikes over a 10 month period. So what does this mean as far as getting back to business as usual. What it means is that workers who have had the virus, a relatively small number, can go back to business as usual, but the rest of us cannot. Those whose business allows them to maintain reasonable social distancing can probably get back to work when the reported number of cases gets down to near zero. Those whose business entails a lot of social contact should not go back to business as usual until there is a vaccine and we all are vaccinated against the coronavirus. Governor Cuomo and others have said that that will probably be 12 to 18 months.
In particular all sports events, concerts, cruise ships, bars, restaurants, troop deployments, schools and religious congregations should stay closed and not go back to business as usual in the immediate future. None of these are essential businesses. Essential businesses are medical workers, agricultural workers, delivery workers, transportation workers, post office workers, police, fire and paramedics. Office workers who can maintain social distancing should also be able to return to work. Much work including schooling can be done over the internet at home. People who can work or school from home should not be in danger of being infected or infecting others. The coronavirus is a ruthless killer and should be treated appropriately.
One of the indirect benefits of this pandemic is that we are forced to consider what are essential and what are inessential businesses and activities. It is becoming obvious that war is inessential; national rivalries and antagonisms are inessential. Cooperation between nations and among all peoples of the earth is essential. Housing the homeless is essential. Adequate sanitation systems and clean water are essential everywhere in the world because a pandemic can start anywhere in the world. Cooperation among nations and peoples to forestall and mitigate climate change is essential, and if the coronavirus pandemic can teach us that, then maybe some good will have come from it.
