I’m much more of an optimist about business travel recovering. I was discussing with my wife, who is heavily involved with various international standards groups. They have all gone to tele/video conference meetings for now. But it makes the hallway/dinner/etc conversations that actually make things work, impossible.
There’s also the point that people actually LIKE travelling, for all sorts of reasons, some more honourable than others but it doesn’t matter. Yes, we could all sit in our home offices and work – and play – exclusively via our computers. Frankly it’s already getting pretty old, after two weeks. And I’m in a regime where there aren’t (yet) armed guards on every street corner – I can go ride my bike every day without so much as a piece of paper.
As for The Thing itself – the sooner there is an immunity test, the better. I am increasingly convinced that in places at least herd immunity is already firmly established via the vast vast majority of asymptomatic or too mild to report cases. The fatality rate is 1-4% of those who are already in such bad shape that the medical system gets to find out about them. The cruise ships alone suggest that the real fatality rate of those exposed is under 0.1%, even for a preselected population of old and weakened people.
johnh wrote:
I’m much more of an optimist about business travel recovering. I was discussing with my wife, who is heavily involved with various international standards groups. They have all gone to tele/video conference meetings for now. But it makes the hallway/dinner/etc conversations that actually make things work, impossible.
I disagree. I think that this will permanently change the home working and travelling dynamic for ever.
As for The Thing itself – the sooner there is an immunity test, the better. I am increasingly convinced that in places at least herd immunity is already firmly established via the vast vast majority of asymptomatic or too mild to report cases. The fatality rate is 1-4% of those who are already in such bad shape that the medical system gets to find out about them. The cruise ships alone suggest that the real fatality rate of those exposed is under 0.1%, even for a preselected population of old and weakened people.
It seems to be about 1% in the population. Maybe less.
johnh wrote:
The cruise ships alone suggest that the real fatality rate of those exposed is under 0.1%, even for a preselected population of old and weakened people.
Where do you take that from? On the Diamond Princess, 10 or 11 out of 700-ish infected died – around 1.45% – and 15 are still critical. And on the ship, everyone was tested, so this is the real infection fatality rate on that ship.
All of the casualties were in their 70s or older, though, and around 60% of all cases were without symptoms.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_on_cruise_ships
the real fatality rate of those exposed is under 0.1%
For the Diamond Princess, about 1.5% of those infected, died (11/712). Everybody on the cruise was by definition fit enough to go on a cruise. This may not always mean ‘very fit’ but it excludes those who are confined to their nursing-homes.
I think Diamond princess has more medical capacity than whole countries, they have at least one bed/doctor for 700 persons 
The fatality rate on that cruise ship was 1%-2% which is roughly about what countries with wide testing like South Korea have (more in 0.5%-1.5% regions or small “closed countries” like Iceland & Bahrain), but I am careful not extrapolating from a small ship to big countries with 100millions as one could think it is 0.5% region for top healthcare systems and 5% when everybody are left dying in their homes
Even 0.1% like flu is meaningless, when did the last time 50% of population was about to catch flu?
I am increasingly convinced that in places at least herd immunity is already firmly established via the vast vast majority of asymptomatic or too mild to report cases. The fatality rate is 1-4% of those who are already in such bad shape that the medical system gets to find out about them.
Based on a lot of experiences with models versus reality, it’s what I do in R&D, I guarantee you that the existing models are wrong in significant ways. It takes lots of iterations with test or equivalent to get them working accurately.
What I’d hope for a main lesson learned is that high population/density isn’t healthy or beneficial and that digital communication much reduces the efficiency advantage that it once provided.
I can see the governmentally encouraged push for high density living reversing, and then by extension the only choice remaining (and the rational one all along) will be less people, full stop.
Yes I agree that we don’t yet know about seasonality, herd immunity or mutations that could dump some or even lot of it but can’t bet on that?
The good news is that now China and South Korea are lifting some of the restrictions and the thing is not “burning like fire” as the models would predict unless they are magically keeping Rt=0.99 by luck? Or there are other stuff that the models can’t show yet, so yes we need few iterations
But you need at least to show that you can slow the thing down today (from a fictitious blow up of NHS in 3 weeks), if not how the heck one think they could control any of this? A bit like checking your breaks before taxi or downwind not after the flare…
I think Diamond princess has more medical capacity than whole countries
My Zimbabwean colleague showed me some text messages sent between the shocked local elite, that have gone viral. “Sadly you are asked to bring in your own ventilator from SA and bring your own oxygen”; “There are apparently only 16 working ventilators in the whole of Zimbabwe!”. Who knew.
real fatality rate of those exposed
Please people, read what I wrote before split-Siong down my throat. I did not say of those infected, I said of those exposed. I.e., if 100% of the population is exposed, what proportion can be expected to die of it? That would make 6,700 in the UK, 30,000 in the US. Considering that at least half of those were probably not far off dying of something or other soon it’s a barely visible blip in the statistics. Which doesn’t make it any less tragic if it happens to someone close to you (or to yourself).
I did read what you wrote, but even then your figures are wrong:
There were 3700 people on the ship, so 11/3700 would be 0.3% and not 0.1%.
The problem is that you don’t know how many people were exposed. In epidemiology, exposure has a specific meaning. e.g. if you shake hands with someone with HIV you have not been exposed to the virus. Not all the people on the Diamond Princess will have been exposed to the virus as there was an attempt made to quarantine them after the outbreak was recognised.
