viruses “die” when they can no longer hold their infectious structure, presumably due to battling the elements (literally elements and molecules, heat, radiation, etc.), not to mention the active defenses of organisms.
it seems this virus dies in a few hours/days outside of a cozy host environment. so yes, get the transmission rate down far enough and it can die out.
While that’s encouraging (also, username checks out)... I find it difficult to put myself the shoes of a 60-80 year old adult in 3 months. At what point will I feel confident enough that I can leave my house?
It seems the most logical conclusion is that we’ll end up in a situation where the most vulnerable segment of the population remains self-quarantined at least until a therapeutic treatment becomes available, which could be over a year.
I have a very hard time imagining people able to do this.
I'm curious about the behaviour of the very old in Wuhan right now, with other people's regular activity going back to something more like normal (If I've heard that correctly), are the older-but-healthy still staying home too? Whatever the details are, looking to their experience in Wuhan as the disease progresses ahead of the western world's experience is useful for thinking about these things.
well first, you'd avoid threads like this that throw trumped-up early/misleading numbers around to scare the crap out of people. but realize that everyday risks, like getting into a car, are non-trivial too (~1 in 100 lifetime risk of dying in a car accident), but we do them anyway.
more to the point, epidemiologists will eventually reach concensus that the infection rate is under control (close to linear, R0≈1, i imagine). most 80+ year olds might need to stay cautious for the rest of their lives (depending on both the actual epidemiology and treatment/prevention options we develop), but that's true of a wide array of threats, like cancer, heart disease, or even just falling.
so basically, it depends on your risk tolerance once we have enough information to determine the actual risks of dying (vs the guestimates we have so far).
Yeah, everyone is criticizing China for hiding numbers early on. Why is nobody criticizing the politicians in the rest of the world who weren't even authorizing testing?
it seems this virus dies in a few hours/days outside of a cozy host environment. so yes, get the transmission rate down far enough and it can die out.