All Bets Are Off

by Erin Bromage

It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from the outbreaks in China and Italy, that shows the backside of the mortality curve declines slowly, with deaths persisting for months. Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, it is possible that we lose another 70,000 people over the next 6 weeks as we come off that peak. That's what's going to happen with a lockdown. As states reopen, and we give the virus more fuel, all bets are off.

6S

Erin Bromage is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he teaches and researches infectious diseases and host immune responses of animals. His six sentences are excerpted from his viral blog post.