Red alert, day 33. Lockdown, day 23. Suffolk has 493 (+35) confirmed cases in today’s figures, neighboring Essex has 1562 (+78, about 2X Suffolk population) cases and Tower Hamlets has 496 (+13, about 0.5X Suffolk population) confirmed cases as of this morning. The UK has recorded 93,873 positive results (after 382,650 tests, some on the same person). There have been 12,107 (+778) patient deaths.
Tests are now broken down into three “pillars”: 1) swab testing of those “with a medical need” and “the most critical workers and their families”; 2) “swab testing for key workers and their households” (meaning nonmedical workers?); 4) national blood testing study to find out what percentage of the population have had the virus. Most tests are still Pillar 1. Pillar 4 is new and has only 3000 tests so far. There is no Pillar 3.
Massachusetts has joined the group of northeastern states that are coordinating their responses, led by New York and Gov. Cuomo. There is also a western group led by California. Within California, the Bay Area is praised for having had a relatively early lockdown announced by Mayor London Breed.
The latest Ed Yong article in The Atlantic, “Our Pandemic Summer,” points out that the right question is what will allow us to get out of isolation, not when. This was the most frightening paragraph for me:
If it turns out that, say, 20 percent of the U.S. has been infected, that would mean the coronavirus is more transmissible but less deadly than scientists think. It would also mean that a reasonable proportion of the country has some immunity. If that proportion could be slowly and safely raised to the level necessary for herd immunity—60 to 80 percent, depending on the virus’s transmissibility—the U.S. might not need to wait for a vaccine. However, if just 1 to 5 percent of the population has been infected—the range that many researchers think is likelier—that would mean “this is a truly devastating virus, and we have built up no real population immunity,” said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist at Harvard. “Then we’re in dire straits in terms of how to move forward.”
I am still quite tired but my sense of smell is stronger than yesterday. Just working on getting through the marking. I had one Skype but no other outside contact.