Earlier today, at his second coronavirus press briefing in less than 24 hours, our Unpresident sounded like a man trying to talk himself through a very scary drug-induced hallucination: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
Thoughts of the pandemic’s voluntary departure with the arrival of warming spring days have been his security blanket for at least a month. Because that’s what his best bud, President Xi of China, told him! And because this is just a flu virus -- and that’s what flu viruses do.
Except this one might not know that, says Dr. Marc Lipsitch in this reader-friendly article.
The Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics examines two myths and four factors underlying Trump/Xi’s eagerly awaited COVID-19 expiration date.
His assessment?
For the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, we have reason to expect that like other betacoronaviruses, it may transmit somewhat more efficiently in winter than summer, though we don’t know the mechanism(s) responsible. The size of the change is expected to be modest, and not enough to stop transmission on its own.
Based on the analogy of pandemic flu, we expect that SARS-CoV-2, as a virus new to humans, will face less immunity and thus transmit more readily even outside of the winter season. Changing seasons and school vacation may help, but are unlikely to stop transmission.
Urgent for effective policy is to determine if children are important transmitters, in which case school closures may help slow transmission, or not, in which case resources would be wasted in such closures. Previously it was thought children were not easily infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Recent evidence from Shenzhen suggests that children may be infected and shed detectable virus at about the same rate as adults — so now the only question is whether they transmit as readily. It seems likely the answer is yes, but no data as of this writing to my knowledge.
I strongly recommend that anyone making plans for April and beyond based on Trump’s assurances read the full article.
And adjust said plans as they see fit.