Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2020 9:47:32 GMT -5
This will make you stand up and take notice:
When will the peak of the coronavirus pandemic hit CNY? What to watch for
Updated 9:59 AM; Today 8:00 AM
Syracuse, N.Y. – When will Central New York see the worst of the coronavirus pandemic? And what happens after that?
No one knows for sure. While it feels like forever since this started, experts say the pandemic is still at the beginning, and it’s hard to make predictions.
Here’s what they do agree on, mostly, right now:
* We’re not at the peak yet. The number of people testing positive and being hospitalized are still climbing.
* We’ll peak after New York City does. Estimates for Downstate’s peak vary between this week to April 18. Upstate is likely to lag by a few weeks.
* We won’t know right away when the peak hits. It will take some time to figure out whether a decrease in the rate of new cases is real or a blip.
* There might be several peaks, not just one. Multiple waves of infections could keep rolling into 2021.
Experts say the pandemic is just getting started in New York. Confirmed cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, are still rising in both New York City and Onondaga County. So are the number of people sick enough to be hospitalized.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that 1,200 people have died, mostly in New York City and surrounding counties. That was up by 200 people for the third day in a row. Cuomo said 9,517 were in hospitals.
Onondaga County confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 16; by Monday, there were 228. The number of people in the hospital rose from five to 23 in a week. Just one person has died.
“Onondaga County is still in the early phases,” said Brian Leydet, who teaches infectious disease and epidemiology classes at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “It’s too early to predict peaks. We won’t know when it’s coming until it gets closer.”
Focusing on the “peak” time might also be misleading. If school closures and other restrictions put in place the last few weeks work as intended, the peak of cases would be much lower, but the pandemic would be stretched out for months. That’s exactly the point of social distancing: not to stop people from getting sick, but from getting sick all at once and overwhelming hospitals.
At daily briefings in Syracuse, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon has said the falling demand for tests is a sign that social distancing is working. Two hours to the west, however, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz has painted a grimmer picture, saying Friday that the peak in the Buffalo area is still several weeks away. Poloncarz said the county is looking at converting a convention center into a field hospital.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York City will be the first to hit the peak, but no part of New York state will be spared.
“Current projections say New York City will face the first high water mark, but then you’ll see Westchester, Long Island on a delay, and then Upstate New York,” Cuomo said Sunday. “So if you are not in a highly infected health area now, that does not mean you won’t have a real situation to deal with because these numbers will just be going up across the state.”
Cuomo says the peak of the epidemic Downstate, when the highest number of patients stream into already overloaded hospitals, is still two to three weeks away. A new study conducted at the University of Washington, where Seattle was battling the virus even earlier than New York, shows New York City could peak this week or next.
There is no shortage of pandemic predictions, as researchers from Seattle to Boston have released papers in the past week showing how the virus might play out. Some of those models show vastly different outcomes, from everything to when the virus will peak to how well social distancing measures are working.
It could still be weeks before the effects of social distancing become clearer. Schools and restaurants were closed only two weeks ago, and on Friday McMahon banned social gatherings. While the number of positives and hospitalizations continued to rise Monday, McMahon remained upbeat, saying the testing backlog was nearly gone and more people are recovering from the illness.
“There’s a lot that can go wrong if the community doesn’t respond well to social distancing,” he cautioned. “If those things start to happen and in the next two to three weeks we really starve this thing, I think we’re going to be in good shape.”
The virus is so new – it emerged in China just four months ago -- that epidemiologists are struggling to craft accurate models that project its arc. They’re hampered by a scarcity of relevant data and a reliance on untested assumptions, which can create big discrepancies between models, or even within the same model. Epidemiologists responding to the FiveThirtyEight blog, for example, give an estimated range of U.S. deaths from 36,000 to 1.3 million.
Trying to figure out how the virus will play out on a smaller scale, like Onondaga County, is even harder, because the virus has been more heavily studied in high density areas in other countries.
“I think it’s too early to know,” said Dr. Sharon Brangman, chair of the geriatrics department at Upstate Medical University. “If we look at what happened with other countries such as China and South Korea and Italy, we know we are not yet at our peak.”
We might not recognize the peak when it happens, at least not right away. A day’s or even a week’s worth of data, especially on a small scale like a county, can be more influenced by random fluctuations than in a heavily populated area with more cases. If the rate of new cases or hospitalizations starts to level out or fall, we’ll have to hold our breath to see if that holds.
Lowering the peak of COVID-19 cases coming into hospitals has been the major focus from day one of the pandemic. After that day comes, though, the problem is far from over. The virus isn’t going to disappear, and social distancing might help create a second wave of infections this summer or fall. A recent University of Massachusetts study said there’s a 73% chance of a second wave happening between August and December.
All of those people who have been staying at home will have to emerge at some point to go to church or get their hair cut. And when they do, they’ll move from the category scientists call “removed” to one called “susceptible.” Their bodies won’t have a way to fend off a virus they’ve essentially hidden from.
“What happens two or three or four months from now when you have this influx of susceptible people?” Leydet asked. “Once the susceptible population moves back from removed, you’re going to see another increase in infections.”
Another reason we could have a fall outbreak is weather. If the novel coronavirus dislikes warmth and humidity as much as the flu and other coronaviruses do, infections will drop off in summer. But then it could roar back in fall and winter
By then, doctors and scientists hope we’ll be in better shape to help the people who get sick next fall. Hospitals won’t be overloaded, and some people infected now will be immune, so the virus will hit a dead-end with them. Over the next year, doctors hope that better treatments and maybe even a vaccine will be developed.
There’s a growing sense that we’re in for the long haul on the virus. Cuomo pushed back the presidential primary that was going to be held April 28, and ordered school board elections pushed back from May 19 to at least June 1. President Trump, after saying he wanted to see churches packed for Easter, on April 12, has extended the federal guidance on social distancing until April 28.
Epidemiologists say we might need to maintain strict social distancing measures for months to make sure we’ve flattened the curve. They point to the flu pandemic of 1918, when restrictions in the spring tamped down infections and deaths. In the fall, though, the flu roared back and killed more people than it had in spring. That could happen again with the coronavirus, experts say.
“I have seen some places in China where they relaxed the measures and they saw a rise in cases,” said Brittany Kmush, a public health professor at Syracuse University. “We have to be careful not to jump the gun.”
www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/03/when-will-the-peak-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-hit-cny-what-to-watch-for.html
When will the peak of the coronavirus pandemic hit CNY? What to watch for
Updated 9:59 AM; Today 8:00 AM
Syracuse, N.Y. – When will Central New York see the worst of the coronavirus pandemic? And what happens after that?
No one knows for sure. While it feels like forever since this started, experts say the pandemic is still at the beginning, and it’s hard to make predictions.
Here’s what they do agree on, mostly, right now:
* We’re not at the peak yet. The number of people testing positive and being hospitalized are still climbing.
* We’ll peak after New York City does. Estimates for Downstate’s peak vary between this week to April 18. Upstate is likely to lag by a few weeks.
* We won’t know right away when the peak hits. It will take some time to figure out whether a decrease in the rate of new cases is real or a blip.
* There might be several peaks, not just one. Multiple waves of infections could keep rolling into 2021.
Experts say the pandemic is just getting started in New York. Confirmed cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, are still rising in both New York City and Onondaga County. So are the number of people sick enough to be hospitalized.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that 1,200 people have died, mostly in New York City and surrounding counties. That was up by 200 people for the third day in a row. Cuomo said 9,517 were in hospitals.
Onondaga County confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 16; by Monday, there were 228. The number of people in the hospital rose from five to 23 in a week. Just one person has died.
“Onondaga County is still in the early phases,” said Brian Leydet, who teaches infectious disease and epidemiology classes at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “It’s too early to predict peaks. We won’t know when it’s coming until it gets closer.”
Focusing on the “peak” time might also be misleading. If school closures and other restrictions put in place the last few weeks work as intended, the peak of cases would be much lower, but the pandemic would be stretched out for months. That’s exactly the point of social distancing: not to stop people from getting sick, but from getting sick all at once and overwhelming hospitals.
At daily briefings in Syracuse, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon has said the falling demand for tests is a sign that social distancing is working. Two hours to the west, however, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz has painted a grimmer picture, saying Friday that the peak in the Buffalo area is still several weeks away. Poloncarz said the county is looking at converting a convention center into a field hospital.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York City will be the first to hit the peak, but no part of New York state will be spared.
“Current projections say New York City will face the first high water mark, but then you’ll see Westchester, Long Island on a delay, and then Upstate New York,” Cuomo said Sunday. “So if you are not in a highly infected health area now, that does not mean you won’t have a real situation to deal with because these numbers will just be going up across the state.”
Cuomo says the peak of the epidemic Downstate, when the highest number of patients stream into already overloaded hospitals, is still two to three weeks away. A new study conducted at the University of Washington, where Seattle was battling the virus even earlier than New York, shows New York City could peak this week or next.
There is no shortage of pandemic predictions, as researchers from Seattle to Boston have released papers in the past week showing how the virus might play out. Some of those models show vastly different outcomes, from everything to when the virus will peak to how well social distancing measures are working.
It could still be weeks before the effects of social distancing become clearer. Schools and restaurants were closed only two weeks ago, and on Friday McMahon banned social gatherings. While the number of positives and hospitalizations continued to rise Monday, McMahon remained upbeat, saying the testing backlog was nearly gone and more people are recovering from the illness.
“There’s a lot that can go wrong if the community doesn’t respond well to social distancing,” he cautioned. “If those things start to happen and in the next two to three weeks we really starve this thing, I think we’re going to be in good shape.”
The virus is so new – it emerged in China just four months ago -- that epidemiologists are struggling to craft accurate models that project its arc. They’re hampered by a scarcity of relevant data and a reliance on untested assumptions, which can create big discrepancies between models, or even within the same model. Epidemiologists responding to the FiveThirtyEight blog, for example, give an estimated range of U.S. deaths from 36,000 to 1.3 million.
Trying to figure out how the virus will play out on a smaller scale, like Onondaga County, is even harder, because the virus has been more heavily studied in high density areas in other countries.
“I think it’s too early to know,” said Dr. Sharon Brangman, chair of the geriatrics department at Upstate Medical University. “If we look at what happened with other countries such as China and South Korea and Italy, we know we are not yet at our peak.”
We might not recognize the peak when it happens, at least not right away. A day’s or even a week’s worth of data, especially on a small scale like a county, can be more influenced by random fluctuations than in a heavily populated area with more cases. If the rate of new cases or hospitalizations starts to level out or fall, we’ll have to hold our breath to see if that holds.
Lowering the peak of COVID-19 cases coming into hospitals has been the major focus from day one of the pandemic. After that day comes, though, the problem is far from over. The virus isn’t going to disappear, and social distancing might help create a second wave of infections this summer or fall. A recent University of Massachusetts study said there’s a 73% chance of a second wave happening between August and December.
All of those people who have been staying at home will have to emerge at some point to go to church or get their hair cut. And when they do, they’ll move from the category scientists call “removed” to one called “susceptible.” Their bodies won’t have a way to fend off a virus they’ve essentially hidden from.
“What happens two or three or four months from now when you have this influx of susceptible people?” Leydet asked. “Once the susceptible population moves back from removed, you’re going to see another increase in infections.”
Another reason we could have a fall outbreak is weather. If the novel coronavirus dislikes warmth and humidity as much as the flu and other coronaviruses do, infections will drop off in summer. But then it could roar back in fall and winter
By then, doctors and scientists hope we’ll be in better shape to help the people who get sick next fall. Hospitals won’t be overloaded, and some people infected now will be immune, so the virus will hit a dead-end with them. Over the next year, doctors hope that better treatments and maybe even a vaccine will be developed.
There’s a growing sense that we’re in for the long haul on the virus. Cuomo pushed back the presidential primary that was going to be held April 28, and ordered school board elections pushed back from May 19 to at least June 1. President Trump, after saying he wanted to see churches packed for Easter, on April 12, has extended the federal guidance on social distancing until April 28.
Epidemiologists say we might need to maintain strict social distancing measures for months to make sure we’ve flattened the curve. They point to the flu pandemic of 1918, when restrictions in the spring tamped down infections and deaths. In the fall, though, the flu roared back and killed more people than it had in spring. That could happen again with the coronavirus, experts say.
“I have seen some places in China where they relaxed the measures and they saw a rise in cases,” said Brittany Kmush, a public health professor at Syracuse University. “We have to be careful not to jump the gun.”
www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/03/when-will-the-peak-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-hit-cny-what-to-watch-for.html
