Shutdowns prevented 60M coronavirus infections in the U.S., study finds

cheald 5 years ago |

"Received: 22 March 2020" - direct from the study cover page at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8_reference....

States imposed lockdowns between March 21 and early April. Someone want to explain to me how a study submitted before the lockdowns were issued (nevermind had time to actually have an impact) "found" those results?

sauwan 5 years ago | |

It must be a typo. March 22nd was a Sunday, where May 22nd was a Friday. It seems unlikely that it would take over 2 months to accept it, considering so many other articles are being rushed to publication in fractions of that time.

ETA: also, charts in that publication also show data collected from April, so unlikely they had data from the future.

sukilot 5 years ago |

Study suggests, not finds. Simulation models can't "find" facts. Observation finds facts.

undersuit 5 years ago | |

Didn't the study of the simulation model find facts about the simulation model?

rogerkirkness 5 years ago |

So far.

djoshea 5 years ago | |

Exactly. I believe the 60 million infections delta was estimated for April 6th (figure 4), so the counterfactual would be considerably worse as of today.

sukilot 5 years ago | |

"So far" meaning "might save more later" or "only postponed, not prevented"?

LorenPechtel 5 years ago | | |

By now we have learned that masks + distancing is enough to stop this (Drive R0 below 1, it will die out in time.) If we were serious about doing these things the cases--and deaths--would be prevented, not merely postponed.

oarabbus_ 5 years ago | | |

The latter. That's always what "flattening the curve" has meant. The total area under the curve (i.e. total unique infected individuals) stays about the same.

thephyber 5 years ago | | |

"Flattening the curve" is not the only possible outcome.

A cure, an inoculation, or segmenting geographic regions until localized herd immunity (like New Zealand just did) are all examples of cutting the curve short.

oarabbus_ 5 years ago | | |

Vaccines are far away from approval for widespread use, and New Zealand's situation as an island nation is not applicable to something like 98% of the World's population and quite frankly, irrelevant to the discussion.

madmaniak 5 years ago |

Simulacrum.