Is the Trump administration sabotaging the coronavirus response in hopes of limiting economic damage? If all you cared about was economic numbers, then it might (if you were a madman) make sense to get everybody sick as soon as possible. The healthcare system would get overloaded and many people would die. On the other hand, mass deaths over a short period of time might cause less economic disruption then long term lockdowns extending for weeks or months.
We don’t know how fast COVID-19 spreads. Estimates are the number of cases double between every three and seven days. One reason we don't know how fast this thing spreads is that inadequate testing means that numbers suddenly jump upward when people are finally able to get tests.
A recent estimates from the Ohio Department of Public Health that 100,000 people — about 1% of the state population, are currently infected with the virus. I’ve been hoping that this number was somebody making a misstatement. I’m afraid it might be accurate.
One infected it takes between three and seven days for symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 to appear. About half of patients get sick enough that they decided to go see a doctor. Somewhere between 10% and 20% will be serious and need hospitalization. Once symptoms emerge is takes another seven days before hospitalization (on average). Let’s call it 12 days all together. That means that, by the time a patient arrives at the hospital, there are 16 times more people infected (had double four times) but not yet seeking treatment. If 1% are infected and the virus doubles every three days then only 1/16 of that number have been sick long enough to need to go to the hospital and half of those were asymptomatic and never felt the need to go in.
Put another way, 3,200,000 currently have COVID-19. Currently, only about 100,000 of those patients have become sick enough to go see a doctor. Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 have been admitted to the hospital. In two weeks 1,600,000 will have been sick enough to see a doctor and 160,000 will need to be admitted to the hospital. At about this point the healthcare system becomes so stressed that it becomes obvious to the average American that something is wrong. Unfortunately, in two weeks 16% of the population is already infected. In another six days 64% of the population will have the disease, and it will start burning itself out. The thing goes through so fast that very little curve flattening takes place.
If this thing doubles every three days, then by the time it becomes big enough that people to see the danger with their own eyes it’s already too late.
I’d say no leader in their right mind would opt for a major mass casualty situation to lessen economic damage. Shockingly, that seems to be what Boris Johnson is advocating in Britain. Could the Trump administration be trying to get the outbreak over with as soon as possible regardless of the number of deaths? Maybe, but as I said only a madman would follow through with such a strategy. I’d feel a lot safer if the White Houses COVID meeting notes weren’t classified.