My degree was in statistics, and I use it often. With my statistics head on…
Please read this excellent research so far from Imperial College. Thanks to my friend Vladimir Shadrunov for passing it on.
It shows the expected scale of the pandemic depending on various forms of Government action. With no immunity or vaccination in the community for a long time, both too little mitigation (v v high mortality rates in next 3 months) and too much suppression (even higher mortality rates later in the year, and with a pre-destroyed economy from suppression policy) are both sub-optimal.
This research (you can read the summary at start, plus Fig 3 B shows it v well in a graph) explains the reason for recent and current Government science-based policy. It’s a fine statistical balance, and predicts multi ICU overload for periods in any scenario, but will become increasingly more understandable (though nasty for everyone) over time if we work to Government policy, as they now see the stats and can turn the taps of mitigation/suppression on and off. There is no way to achieve both low spread and economic/social ease. Numbers and hardship are about to rise v steeply now but it will be mitigated and suppressed by policies as far as possible. And no doubt this research will be updated too. I’m not an expert in epidemiology but have some knowledge of health and stats, probability and forecasting. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Please keep any comments sensible, and private message me with any question. Good luck everyone, keep talking and look after each other.
Link to Article: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0zV-eKnH1Qu4oO2EbbzMN4Vx_A_D72W69oyomSMbU2okQ1z3iJH7pu23o