If it just goes unchecked exponentialy for 2 months then significant fraction of world population will die. Like 2-digit percentage.

Not only that, demographically the hardest hit population (80+) are not in the time of their lives where they spend the bulk of their money nor are they in the most productive time of their lives.

See https://youtu.be/BYTFk34nhoI from the 10 to 12 minute mark.

At which point, once we have fast and reliable testing, we can actually start having people go out more and reduce the isolation, since we can count on better testing to stop the spread.

My niece and great nephews in Victoria, BC just turned up with symptoms for COVID. They were told to self-quarantine and were not tested.

You cannot believe the numbers from any country which does not have a robust testing regime. That emphatically includes Canada along with the USA.

That's not to suggest that 18% of the population is infected. Merely suggests that positive tests is a useless metric because people are not tested.

Number of people admitted to hospital might be a better indicator -- though this has a lot of delay.

It's a symptom of massive under-testing and would be greatly alleviated by an inexpensive test.

Yet the messaging until recently was "no evidence of community spread, risk remains low" with very lukewarm response. Of course there is no evidence if you don't look for it.

I understand they don't want to incite panic but anyone who's been paying attention to other countries can see that community spread is inevitable unless you have strict measures and robust testing, very early on. I'm pissed our politicians have ignored lessons from other countries.

I think this site may be paywalled unfortunately (but there is just a $1 for the first month charge):

https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...

The second graph in there shows Canada is tracking exactly the same path as most European countries and the US.

Exponential growth at the current rate would have it burning through the global population by the end of June, but since exponential growth becomes logistic growth after an appreciable fraction of the population is infected, June is probably closer to the halfway point than the end date.

And that's assuming zero curve flattening. The entire point of flattening the curve is to draw it out so that hospitals continue to function for longer. But this also makes the pandemic last longer.

A vaccine isn't expected for over a year, and even then, I'd expect at least a few months of logistical difficulties getting enough manufactured, distributed, and administered, especially given the state that hospitals will likely be in.

We would be screwed, IMHO, based on the current mitigation strategies around curve flattening that are not being communicated realistically to the public. The crop of shutdowns over the weekend were billed as 2-3 weeks.. Err, what? How are we even going to know what effect that's having without massive blanket testing? Then, nobody seems to believe anything less than 8 weeks is enough; and that's full-blown lock-down not fractions of half measures.

But as you say, the just spreads it out. So what happens in 8 weeks when we still can't let up the restrictions because if we did that the number of cases would just explode again among the uninfected population? If we aren't turning the corner by June and getting the 40% of adults who can't afford $400 in an emergency back to work..

I'm sympathetic to the UKs strategy and hope the best for them.

Exactly. People seem to be mistaking the incubation period (~two weeks) for the length of time the pandemic will last (months at minimum).

It's impossible to have a perfect quarantine, so if we were to all go back to normal after a month, the pandemic growth curve will pick up where it left off. Exiting the lockdown will need to be done super carefully to avoid this outcome.

As far as I can tell, this is probably going to be the new normal until we have a vaccine.

An Imperial College paper [1] out today predicts this under its most stringent suppression scenario; see the chart on page 10.

[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

Do the math on those "flatten the curve" graphs and work out the X-axis given the projected infection rates (20%-60% of population), hospitalisation rate (15%-30%), days in hospital required (6-9) and the number of beds available.

This ends with a vaccine or a mutation that gives (partial?) immunity and a lower death rate.