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Top Israeli prof claims simple stats show virus plays itself out after 70 days (timesofisrael.com)
18 points by smacktoward on April 15, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments



> Isaac Ben-Israel, who is not a medical expert, says analysis worldwide shows new cases peaking after about 40 days, slams economic closures; leading doctor dismisses his claims


The guy has no idea what he's talking about. The virus is not playing this game by itself but against humans. When the host is dumb then the virus can play out based on how fast it infects, incubates and kills the host. In this case, despite a high R0 and a long incubation time, man is fighting this with social distancing meaning that the virus can't burn itself out. What the prof is suggesting is letting everyone get infected. Sure, that could be done, but at what cost? Say 1/2 the population 3.5billion people at 1% morality that's still 35 million dead.


I can't read Hebrew, but this doesn't seem that controversial. For example, many countries plotted on the FT coronavirus website show similar plots of deaths/day vs time.

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest


>...no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.

Governments take measures to avoid overwhelming the health system, it’s not the same having 200k infections in 2 months than in 2 weeks.




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