This is the future of the pandemic bdnews24.com

“How exactly will it remain,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology epidemicologist at TH Chan Public Health School at Harvard University. “It’s going to be a matter of managing it for months to years. It doesn’t matter to get over the peak, as some people seem to believe it.”

In the long run, the one-off social distance of closing schools and workplaces, limiting the size of rallies, and blocking different strengths and durations is not enough.

To manage our expectations and manage ourselves accordingly, it may be helpful to the state of mind of a pandemic to imagine this predicament as a soliton wave, at least existentially. Far away with my own power.

Scottish engineer and naval architect John Scott Russell discovered the soliton in 1834 and moved along the Union Canal. He rode a horse and overturned it at about 8 mph, about 30 feet long and about 1 foot high, as he wrote in his “Wave Report”. “Its height gradually diminished, and after tracking for a mile or two, I lost it on a winding channel.”

Similarly, the wave of pandemics exists with us for a foreseeable future. However, depending on the location and the policies in place, we can see various dimensions and dynamics that move through time and space.

“There is a parallel between weather forecasting and disease modeling,” Lipsic said. He said both are simple mathematical descriptions of how the system works. For meteorology, we use physics and chemistry. Behavior in case of infectious disease modeling, virology, epidemiology. Of course, “we can’t change the weather,” he said. But we can change the direction of the pandemic — by our actions, balancing and adjusting psychological, social, economic, and political factors.

Lipsitch is the co-author of two recent analyzes. One by the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, and another by Chan School in Science magazine, explaining that pandemic waves can occur in different ways. The next few months.

A Minnesota survey describes three potential futures.

The first case shows the first wave of the case (the current one). Then, in a year or two, the mountains and valleys gradually change into bumps.

The second assumes that the current wave is followed by a large autumn peak, or perhaps a winter peak, followed by a small wave that follows. This is similar to what happened during the 1918-19 flu pandemic.

The third shows less undulations, with “slow burns” following the intense spring peak.

The authors argued that whatever reality realized (when waiting for a vaccine, and therefore envisioning ongoing mitigation measures), “hotspots regularly appear in different geographical areas, at least We need to prepare for another 18-24 months of significant COVID-19 activity. ” . “

In Science Paper, Harvard Team-Infectious Disease Epidemiology Jonathan Grad. Stephen Kistler, his postdoc. Lipsitch; his PhD student Christine Tedijanto. And his colleague Edward Goldstein—exploring various possibilities by simulating transmission dynamics using data from the latest COVID-19 data and related viruses.

The authors communicate their results in a series of graphs (composed by Kissler and Tedijanto) to predict a similarly wavy future characterized by mountains and valleys.

One figure in this paper shows possible scenarios (details vary geographically) and shows the trajectory of COVID-19 infections as a function of “intermittent social distance”.

When the number of cases of COVID-19 reaches a certain prevalence in the population, the social distance is “on”. For example, thresholds are set locally and monitored with extensive testing. It turns “off” when the case falls below the lower threshold (5 cases per 10,000). This strategy is aimed at keeping the healthcare system from being overwhelmed, as serious cases requiring hospitalization lag the common prevalence.

Another iteration shows the effect of seasonality — slower spread of the virus during warm months. Theoretically, seasonal influences increase the intervals between periods of greater social distance.

But this year, the seasonal impact is probably minimal, as the majority of the population is still susceptible to summer viruses. Also, the underlying mechanisms of seasonality (temperature, humidity, school schedule, etc.) have been studied in some respiratory infections such as influenza, but not in coronaviruses, so I have some questions. So, alas, we can’t rely solely on seasonality to stop another outbreak for the next few months.

Yet another scenario takes into account not only seasonality, but also the doubling of hospital emergency care capabilities. This allows social distances to start at higher thresholds (for example, prevalence of 70 cases per 10,000 cases) and allow longer intervals of social distances.

Overall, it is clear that one-off social withdrawal efforts are not sufficient to control the epidemic in the long run, and it takes a long time to reach an acceptable herd immunity.

“This is because a small number of people get an infectious disease when we succeed in getting social distance, that is, when we do not overwhelm the medical system, that is exactly the goal.” He said. “But if the infection leads to immunity, successful social distances also mean that more people are more susceptible to the disease. As a result, once the measures to reduce social distance are lifted, the virus Perhaps it will spread as easily as before the blockade. “

Therefore, due to the lack of a vaccine, our pandemic status could last until 2021 or 2022, which surprised even the experts.

“We expected that social distances would need to be extended, but we weren’t initially aware that it could be this long,” Kistler said.

c.2020 New York Times Company