Reports reveal what officials are being told about COVID-19 ... and it's not what they are telling us

Two reports have made their way into the public eye showing the real advice that national leaders in both the U.S. and U.K. are getting behind the scenes. And even for people who have seen stadiums idled, schools closed, and an unsettling unpredictability at the grocery store, what these reports have to say is worse than unsettling. These are definitely reports to be read while sitting down.

The two reports, one from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the other from Imperial College London, were generated separately, but both of them reach similar conclusions: We’ve already waited too long to “flatten the curve” with the kind of actions that have been taken to date. Instead, this is going to be a long, hard fight, requiring some genuinely dire steps. And there may be no end to the threat until a vaccine is widely available—more than a year from now.

Reading the Imperial College report, it’s easier to see why the U.K. government has been tossing out a raft of ideas—even the patently ridiculous thought of allowing millions to become infected to generate a kind of fast herd immunity. Because the report’s predictions are somewhere beyond appalling.

Focusing almost exclusively on just the effects of the pandemic on health and the healthcare system, the researchers behind the report (including a lead investigator who is himself now in isolation after displaying symptoms of COVID-19) provide information that paints a bleak picture of where we're going. What that report makes clear is that none of the half measures that have been taken so far, on either side of the Atlantic, are sufficient. The effects on people’s lives may already seem extreme, but what’s been done so far isn’t nearly enough to dent the rising arc of new cases.

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/18/1928623/-Reports-reveal-what-officials-are-being-told-about-COVID-19-and-it-s-not-what-they-are-telling-us#read-more


https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6819-covid-19-response-plan/d367f758bec47cad361f/optimized/full.pdf#page=1

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf