Quote:
Originally Posted by RWebb
Wayne, infected people (who survive) will develop antibodies to the virus; and after some weeks will no longer shed the virus to infect others
There is also so-called "Herd immunity" - here is what it really is:
If few enough people are infected and interact below some critical level with susceptible people, then it will die out.
There are rather complicated mathematical models involving encounter rates of infected with susceptible people, transmissibility from one person to another, time course of the infection and other things that are used to predict whether a disease will continue or die out. They often involve systems of coupled differential equations and solutions usually have to be simulated.
Instr. 41 - not sure I understand your question, but we will know it is flattening out by testing people
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Yes, I had a conversation with a friend (doctor) about this, this morning. We both agreed it might be heading in this direction. Unfortunately, this scenario is very bad with 1.5M deaths in the US alone, required for us to reach this "herd immunity" level. Absent a vaccine, that seems to be the likely scenario. There's no way this genie is going back into the bottle without killing a whole bunch of people and potentially overwhelming our hospitals.
I hope I'm wrong.
-Wayne