Analyzing current COVID-19 strategies and trying to find a better solution

[20kevin20]

I've spent more than 4 weeks completely self-isolated at home trying to prevent a pandemic. Unfortunately though, many have shown too much ignorance and this lead to Italy and China having to go through the worst.

My mind has predominantly been occupied in the past few weeks with analyzing all the possible strategies there are to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm constantly trying to find a solution that would work best and would provide the least damage. Time is our enemy as of now though, so any solution must be applied immediately or the situation could get even worse.

As far as I'm concerned, any strategy has an unavoidable sacrifice. Be it lives, economy or something else, there is a sacrifice to be made.


I've seen countries take different paths toward the virus containment. Let's analyze the existing strategies.

1. Do nothing and let the virus spread hoping for herd immunity to happen. We've heard this in The Netherlands and in the UK (which is now apparently backing out of the plan) and in my opinion, this is the worst path you can go for. This strategy is great for the economy, but will come with an insane number of sacrificed human beings. Letting everything be means the virus will spread like wildfire and the hospitals will more than likely become overcrowded. COVID-19 cases will then become the prioritized cases in the hospitals, which means all the other causes of death will have a surge. In other words, this sounds more like a "we don't care about our citizens, all we want is our economy to thrive" plan. The thing is, this strategy could go very wrong: if at some point everything gets out of control and the hospitals are literally unable to keep up with the infected, the authorities will most likely go for a quarantine which means taking down the economy after sacrificing a significant number of lives. Moreover, there is literally no evidence AFAIK about herd immunity so chances are things will get out of control anyway and this will be basically repeating the 1918 Spanish Flu all over. If this strategy is applied and the number of infections needing hospitalization surges, an entire chain of problems pops up: If you have enough ventillators, you don't have enough space in the hospitals. If you have enough space, you don't have the personnel. If you have the personnel, you don't have unlimited resources to keep up with all the pacients. And so on.

2. Slowly take measures the more COVID-19 spreads in the country. This one is basically trying to keep the economy up as much as possible while also keeping the cases under a somewhat control. Italy, Spain, France and China have shown very well that this is a bad strategy because there will be a point where you just won't be able to keep up with the cases anymore and so you'll need to lock down your entire country. I usually compare this to the Bitcoin halving: the number of confirmed cases is growing at a pretty fast pace, so measures against the virus are implemented every now and then to slow down the growth of this pandemic. Is it worth it though? The virus is being spread at a somewhat slower pace, but hospital overcrowding still does happen. I believe this is not a good strategy either. You try keeping everything under control but there is going to be a point where things get out of control anyway. Therefore, this strategy will end with both human lives and the economy sacrificed.

3. Take strict measures against the virus, close everything and lock down the country ASAP. There is no country that has locked itself down immediately after the first cases AFAIK, but this "lockdown" countermeasure has been taken in various countries and we've seen the effects. As soon as a lockdown happens, the economies go into a literal freefall of double-digit one-day stock losses. This is a measure to strictly try containing the virus but you have to sacrifice the economy. I believe this would've been the best strategy out of all 3 and would have worked very smoothly if governments would have psychologically prepared their citizens in time to avoid hysteria. If we all knew there is going to be a lockdown BUT food and drugs will still be in shops, there would've been way less panic than trying to chill everyone down for weeks and then announcing a very strict measure (locking down your entire country). Although the economy is sacrificed, I think it's more worth it than sacrificing human lives.


Now let me share with you a few strategies I've thought of. I'm posting this entire thread here hoping that maybe there is a genius mind out there who has a better solution to the pandemic than all of us. My strategies have their own flaws too. Here they are:

1. Split the population into two (by age) and apply two different strategies for each part. The population would be split into people <45 and people >45. People under 45 living by themselves should be let to work under normal conditions and continue their lives. Everyone else over 45 will stay under quarantine at home together with everyone they live in the same house with. If someone under 45 has underlying conditions known to lead to severe symptoms of COVID-19, they will be quarantined at home too.

I found the following flaws in this strategy:
- How will we monitor everyone who will have to be quarantined at home?
- If everyone under 45 is going to continue their lives, the chances of those >45 to get infected will surge significantly.


2. Herd immunity: infect everyone, in waves of dozens/hundreds of thousands of people every week. There are a lot of asymptomatic cases that have not been confirmed yet. If the youth has a much smaller chance of having severe symptoms, this means there is probably already a significant percentage of youth carrying COVID-19. If we infect everyone in waves (descending by age), then the older (which is also more prone to the severe symptoms) will be under control. If we gradually infect in weekly waves, we could have a pretty good idea (thanks to the existing statistics from Italy and China, although I don't trust the Chinese ones that much) how many ICUs will be needed so things could remain under control continuously. Once everyone over 45 will be infected and things are under control, the quarantine could be lifted because way less of the youth will need hospitalization.

I found the following flaws in this strategy:
- According to Worldometers, the death rate for those over 80 years old is 14.8%. Say all deaths from severe cases of +80yo confirmed cases have had ICUs (which is the ideal condition). How will we cope with the death rate in this case? Starting with the death rate of 14.8% and purposely infecting everyone in waves starting from descending ages, this means we're going to expect a 14.8%.. or 1.88M deaths in the US (source: calculating 14.8% of the people over 80yo in the US based on the numbers from Statista).
- This will take an awful lot of time to infect everyone in waves. However, instead of applying the "let everything be" strategy, this one at least tries to surpress the number of severe cases so hospitals could be under control at the same time. Moreover, the quarantine time could be reduced by weeks or even months, which is very critical.
- Again, AFAIK there is no known case of herd immunity. Some of the older cases have been reinfected. What if a second wave of the virus or a stronger strain hits and the death rate surges significantly?


I'm trying to come up with a solution to the critical situation the entire world is into right now. I know my strats aren't the best, but it's the only solution I can think of. If anyone has a better strategy, please leave it here. I'll make sure to read all your thoughts very clearly. I'm looking for a way to both sacrifice the least of everything and stop the crisis in a reasonable time.

[Soldierswitlittlefaith]

"......Split the population into two (by age) and apply two different strategies for each part..."

The splitting by age should be a good idea, also by sex because in italy men seems to be more nCOV positive when compare to women.
This could probably due to the fact that the female imune system is more resistant when compare to that of men.

Now, i notice some countries are now trying to bring politic's into this instead, of teaming-up in one accord to fight against this invisible terrorist by putting aside all personal interest.

In the northern part of Italy, the death rate is alarming (including medical doctor's) . Now they've ran out of space & medical equipment's.
Opinion's from some of the resident's say why this tragic is going on some of the worker's in most of the construction's company are busy producing product's which are cause of pollution within this area.

Other say, the air is polluted and this could be reason behind high rate of ncov victim within BERGAMO......

Thanks
Soldierwitlittlefaith

[20kevin20]

"......Split the population into two (by age) and apply two different strategies for each part..."

The splitting by age should be a good idea, also by sex because in italy men seems to be more nCOV positive when compare to women.
This could probably due to the fact that the female imune system is more resistant when compare to that of men.

Now, i notice some countries are now trying to bring politic's into this instead, of teaming-up in one accord to fight against this invisible terrorist by putting aside all personal interest.

In the northern part of Italy, the death rate is alarming (including medical doctor's) . Now they've ran out of space & medical equipment's.
Opinion's from some of the resident's say why this tragic is going on some of the worker's in most of the construction's company are busy producing product's which are cause of pollution within this area.

Other say, the air is polluted and this could be reason behind high rate of ncov victim within BERGAMO......

Thanks
Soldierwitlittlefaith

Well, to me it looks like this was a partially political game from the beginning and the politics are now only becoming more prevalent in this crisis the further we get into it.

The air pollution, from what I've heard on the TV a few days ago, surely does drive the death rate higher than it should be in those polluted areas. However, even without pollution, the death rate is alarming and let's not forget the fact that a lot of cities with high population density are also polluted around the world, which means we're talking about a pretty large part of the cities that are under the risk of an alarming death rate.

EDIT (pushed the Post button too early by mistake):
I unfortunately think the efforts we make to find a good, better solution to the COVID-19 situation will be in vain because there could be an underlying political plan they don't want disrupted. One of the reasons I believe there's a plan behind this entire virus thing is the fact that D. Trump tried to obtain exclusive rights for the COVID-19 vaccine produced by a company from Germany. It looks like they don't want the vaccine to be around very early, so they'd do and pay anything to obtain the vaccine before we, the population, will have it. This is already going off-topic though, so I'll stop the paragraph here.

A better solution will hopefully be at least adopted in a few countries so they'll have a much lower number of deaths. I'm still thinking of one that could help out..

[Lucius]

I'm constantly trying to find a solution that would work best and would provide the least damage. Time is our enemy as of now though, so any solution must be applied immediately or the situation could get even worse.
As far as I'm concerned, any strategy has an unavoidable sacrifice. Be it lives, economy or something else, there is a sacrifice to be made.

The problem is actually the slowness of the system (we can exclude China here), as we can see from the EU example, where the issue of border closure has been discussed for a month, and in the same time tens of thousands of people move from one country to another transmitting a virus with almost no control.

Italy made a cardinal mistake by allowing the virus to spread to hospitals and clinics, infecting doctors and medical staff first, and then infecting all patients, most of them elderly. The system simply burst, people dying in the corridors of hospitals because there are not enough rooms and respirators. Other EU countries have fortunately responded in a much better way, closing borders and introducing quarantine for the whole country, so hopefully the Italian scenario will not happen again.

Main problem in combating the pandemic is insufficient testing, to what the WHO chief also warned saying "You can not extinguish fire with blindfold on eyes", and many countries are doing just that. The main reason is that the panic level is kept as low as possible and that the economy suffers as little damage as possible. But unfortunately it cannot produce results, which has made many countries actually change their procedures completely, but definitely too late.

For now, the only option is to enforce strict quarantines, test as many people as possible, and limit population movement to at least 30 days. If the world were united in such measures, we could achieve very good results. Vaccine is something we absolutely need, but although hundreds of labs around the world are working on it, everyone says it won't be realistic for at least another 5 months.

[20kevin20]

~

Don't you think it's pretty weird and sketchy that all countries are making the same mistake, considering there have been numerous pandemic preparedness events in the past few years? Take a look over a little list of some of the pandemic preparedness the US has had in the recent years:

• http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/
• https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/legal/pahpa/Pages/pahpaia.aspx
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6958434/
• http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events/2018_clade_x_exercise/about-clade-x

... and the list can continue. They all have the needed experts and scientists to take the needed steps and measures at the right time. The pandemic could've been prevented if they wanted to. If we, the citizens see there is a problem, I doubt the officials don't.

Regarding the vaccine, IIRC, Bill Gates said in a documentary (from the Explain series on Netflix) that obtaining a vaccine and giving it to the population in 10-12 months would be a world record. Hence, I don't have much of a hope that it's going to happen.

[Soldierswitlittlefaith]

"......Split the population into two (by age) and apply two different strategies for each part..."

.....

In the northern part of Italy, the death rate is alarming (including medical doctor's) . Now they've ran out of space & medical equipment's.
Opinion's from some of the resident's say why this tragic is going on some of the worker's in most of the construction's company are busy producing product's which are cause of pollution within this area.

Other say, the air is polluted and this could be reason behind high rate of ncov victim within BERGAMO......

Thanks
Soldierwitlittlefaith

Well, to me it looks like this was a partially political game from the beginning and the politics are now only becoming more prevalent in this crisis the further we get into it.

.......
A better solution will hopefully be at least adopted in a few countries so they'll have a much lower number of deaths. I'm still thinking of one that could help out..

"...COVID-19 vaccine produced by a company from Germany."

Yes, talking about the vaccine, yes i had it's the same vaccine which was used to cure ebola. But, this time we really need to be watchful.

Be the watchman of your country, i know it's difficult to think twice when it comes to the vaccine b/c the heart of people have already melted in fear.

Pls,Well, let watch out.

Thanks
Soldierwitlittlefaith

[Lucius]

Don't you think it's pretty weird and sketchy that all countries are making the same mistake, considering there have been numerous pandemic preparedness events in the past few years?
... and the list can continue. They all have the needed experts and scientists to take the needed steps and measures at the right time. The pandemic could've been prevented if they wanted to. If we, the citizens see there is a problem, I doubt the officials don't.

At the very least, it's weird, because if they were prepared and saw what was happening in China, why didn't they react appropriately? If I wrote something about it, I'd probably go into conspiracy theories, so I'll refrain from that. Personally, I can only say that I do not think the virus accidentally hit China first, then Iran and then thousands of miles away Italy.

As for Italy, I have seen reports from their authorities that 40% of their citizens do not follow the rules and walk around as if nothing is happening (they track them by mobile phones), and in the same time almost 500 people die every day, which was also commented by the Vice President of the Red Cross of China when he visited Italy recently. They still think that is some kind of joke...

Also interesting is that Germany has about 16,000 infected but only 44 deaths, which is explained by the fact that Germany has 25 000 beds for patients with respiratory problems, while Italy has only 5,000, UK only 4000. From this we can see that investing in healthcare plays a very big role in these situations, and Germany is had only 0.18% mortality rate, Italy 8.3%, and China 4%.

Regarding USA, some of them know very well what was going to happen, and for example President of the US Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr sold all of his stock in February, in time Trump was saying there will not be more than 15 people infected with COVID-19. If Burr was aware of the danger that coming, I bet Trump is also aware, but he obviously had some other intentions if he hid the truth.

[UserU]

At the very least, it's weird, because if they were prepared and saw what was happening in China, why didn't they react appropriately? If I wrote something about it, I'd probably go into conspiracy theories, so I'll refrain from that. Personally, I can only say that I do not think the virus accidentally hit China first, then Iran and then thousands of miles away Italy.

As for Italy, I have seen reports from their authorities that 40% of their citizens do not follow the rules and walk around as if nothing is happening (they track them by mobile phones), and in the same time almost 500 people die every day, which was also commented by the Vice President of the Red Cross of China when he visited Italy recently. They still think that is some kind of joke...

There are just stubborn individuals who downplay the lethality of the whole thing, because they've never experience such pandemic before. Just like how people can only relate from experience once they're exposed to it.

Recently in my country, despite a nationwide lockdown, there was a discussion whereby a few elderly men from a video circulated refused to leave a restaurant despite being informed until a few hours later.

[franky1]

most countries policy is
self isolate (not get it yet)
prep the hospitals, train the staff. get the equipment. then relax the isolation. and have ability to enforce it again if it goes like wild fire too fast. basically waves of 'catch and release'

here is the stupid future plan for stage 3.
some countries want to give people a coloured wristband/certificate to say they have passed a test that they have antibodies..
however anyone with photoshop and a printer. will stupidly print out a copy and pretend they are fine and catch it and pass it. because all they care about is not being in isolation any more even if they have not been tested

im still waiting to see if china has a massive second wave.
news just today(as predicted in my earlier posts in other topics last month) a second wave is starting in china.. but how massive this next wave will be is yet to be seen

[Chrystora123]

so far only South Korea's best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (without Lockdown).  but again, the way South Korea is very difficult to apply throughout the world especially countries with low levels of education and high mobility of people such as India, US, and Indonesia. 

The United States which is known as one of the developed countries is very difficult to implement "Social & Physical Distancing".  if "Social & Physical Distancing" is really done by people all over the world (like in South Korea) then the spread of this virus will stop,
at this time we will not know when this pandemic passed, because the peak of the spread of this virus in each country is different

[Lucius]

If you've been ignoring the problem for long enough, then it will hit your head sooner or later. This is exactly what is happening in those countries we call highly developed (UK&USA) where the current political leadership spoke with derision about the virus, and today they have the beginning of a real catastrophe in their backyard.

UK with almost 42 000 infected has a mortality rate of almost 10% (4313), and USA is today on almost 280 000 infected and 7400 deaths, but corona party is just start there. As always, ordinary people will pay the greatest price with the loss of their lives and jobs, and all the bad things that will come later.

I think that the current situation in some countries is quite difficult, and that a lot of people will die before the turn comes - either due to the arrival of warm weather or the vaccine that will appear on the market.

[franky1]

excuse my bias here, im british

though i dont like how the UK took nearly 2 months from first warning to actually implement lockdown.
though i dont like how it is still showing the UK is still trying to 'repatriate' people from abroad.

one thing has been very very clear.
the isolation is not to cure/immunise people in their homes.
its to DELAY the spread. because hospitals wont cope.

its been made clear delay. delay delay.
they made it clear that the whole event can last in some form for upto 18 months.

again its been made clear, this isolation is the calm before the storm. this is not the storm yet, this is the light breeze

yes from medical side its the calm before the storm.
and yes economic/business side it feels like the storm.
but this is still the beginning not the end

its why businesses are being prepped to receive 12 months of financial support and why those on social security will be boosted a little each month for 12 months.

the impact has not even actually started yet. this is the tide receeding before the tsunami
people on social security and businesses are not even getting the first payments until may/june
if government thought it was just funding needed for just march/april. they would have just thrown money at it now, and sort out the paperwork later.
however this is not even the tsunami hitting yet. this is the baten down the hatches board up the windows prep time

[easemypain]

I've spent more than 4 weeks completely self-isolated at home trying to prevent a pandemic. Unfortunately though, many have shown too much ignorance and this lead to Italy and China having to go through the worst.

My mind has predominantly been occupied in the past few weeks with analyzing all the possible strategies there are to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm constantly trying to find a solution that would work best and would provide the least damage. Time is our enemy as of now though, so any solution must be applied immediately or the situation could get even worse.

As far as I'm concerned, any strategy has an unavoidable sacrifice. Be it lives, economy or something else, there is a sacrifice to be made.


I've seen countries take different paths toward the virus containment. Let's analyze the existing strategies.

1. Do nothing and let the virus spread hoping for herd immunity to happen. We've heard this in The Netherlands and in the UK (which is now apparently backing out of the plan) and in my opinion, this is the worst path you can go for. This strategy is great for the economy, but will come with an insane number of sacrificed human beings. Letting everything be means the virus will spread like wildfire and the hospitals will more than likely become overcrowded. COVID-19 cases will then become the prioritized cases in the hospitals, which means all the other causes of death will have a surge. In other words, this sounds more like a "we don't care about our citizens, all we want is our economy to thrive" plan. The thing is, this strategy could go very wrong: if at some point everything gets out of control and the hospitals are literally unable to keep up with the infected, the authorities will most likely go for a quarantine which means taking down the economy after sacrificing a significant number of lives. Moreover, there is literally no evidence AFAIK about herd immunity so chances are things will get out of control anyway and this will be basically repeating the 1918 Spanish Flu all over. If this strategy is applied and the number of infections needing hospitalization surges, an entire chain of problems pops up: If you have enough ventillators, you don't have enough space in the hospitals. If you have enough space, you don't have the personnel. If you have the personnel, you don't have unlimited resources to keep up with all the pacients. And so on.

2. Slowly take measures the more COVID-19 spreads in the country. This one is basically trying to keep the economy up as much as possible while also keeping the cases under a somewhat control. Italy, Spain, France and China have shown very well that this is a bad strategy because there will be a point where you just won't be able to keep up with the cases anymore and so you'll need to lock down your entire country. I usually compare this to the Bitcoin halving: the number of confirmed cases is growing at a pretty fast pace, so measures against the virus are implemented every now and then to slow down the growth of this pandemic. Is it worth it though? The virus is being spread at a somewhat slower pace, but hospital overcrowding still does happen. I believe this is not a good strategy either. You try keeping everything under control but there is going to be a point where things get out of control anyway. Therefore, this strategy will end with both human lives and the economy sacrificed.

3. Take strict measures against the virus, close everything and lock down the country ASAP. There is no country that has locked itself down immediately after the first cases AFAIK, but this "lockdown" countermeasure has been taken in various countries and we've seen the effects. As soon as a lockdown happens, the economies go into a literal freefall of double-digit one-day stock losses. This is a measure to strictly try containing the virus but you have to sacrifice the economy. I believe this would've been the best strategy out of all 3 and would have worked very smoothly if governments would have psychologically prepared their citizens in time to avoid hysteria. If we all knew there is going to be a lockdown BUT food and drugs will still be in shops, there would've been way less panic than trying to chill everyone down for weeks and then announcing a very strict measure (locking down your entire country). Although the economy is sacrificed, I think it's more worth it than sacrificing human lives.


Now let me share with you a few strategies I've thought of. I'm posting this entire thread here hoping that maybe there is a genius mind out there who has a better solution to the pandemic than all of us. My strategies have their own flaws too. Here they are:

1. Split the population into two (by age) and apply two different strategies for each part. The population would be split into people <45 and people >45. People under 45 living by themselves should be let to work under normal conditions and continue their lives. Everyone else over 45 will stay under quarantine at home together with everyone they live in the same house with. If someone under 45 has underlying conditions known to lead to severe symptoms of COVID-19, they will be quarantined at home too.

I found the following flaws in this strategy:
- How will we monitor everyone who will have to be quarantined at home?
- If everyone under 45 is going to continue their lives, the chances of those >45 to get infected will surge significantly.


2. Herd immunity: infect everyone, in waves of dozens/hundreds of thousands of people every week. There are a lot of asymptomatic cases that have not been confirmed yet. If the youth has a much smaller chance of having severe symptoms, this means there is probably already a significant percentage of youth carrying COVID-19. If we infect everyone in waves (descending by age), then the older (which is also more prone to the severe symptoms) will be under control. If we gradually infect in weekly waves, we could have a pretty good idea (thanks to the existing statistics from Italy and China, although I don't trust the Chinese ones that much) how many ICUs will be needed so things could remain under control continuously. Once everyone over 45 will be infected and things are under control, the quarantine could be lifted because way less of the youth will need hospitalization.

I found the following flaws in this strategy:
- According to Worldometers, the death rate for those over 80 years old is 14.8%. Say all deaths from severe cases of +80yo confirmed cases have had ICUs (which is the ideal condition). How will we cope with the death rate in this case? Starting with the death rate of 14.8% and purposely infecting everyone in waves starting from descending ages, this means we're going to expect a 14.8%.. or 1.88M deaths in the US (source: calculating 14.8% of the people over 80yo in the US based on the numbers from Statista).
- This will take an awful lot of time to infect everyone in waves. However, instead of applying the "let everything be" strategy, this one at least tries to surpress the number of severe cases so hospitals could be under control at the same time. Moreover, the quarantine time could be reduced by weeks or even months, which is very critical.
- Again, AFAIK there is no known case of herd immunity. Some of the older cases have been reinfected. What if a second wave of the virus or a stronger strain hits and the death rate surges significantly?


I'm trying to come up with a solution to the critical situation the entire world is into right now. I know my strats aren't the best, but it's the only solution I can think of. If anyone has a better strategy, please leave it here. I'll make sure to read all your thoughts very clearly. I'm looking for a way to both sacrifice the least of everything and stop the crisis in a reasonable time.

In addition to what you said above.
Maintain a high level of hygiene
Boosting the immune system regularly
Constant medical examination
And strict rules on social gatherings.