Have we flattened the curve?
It’s too soon to declare victory, but it’s looking that way, says
Dr. Stephen Hawes, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Even if
the curve was flattened, it doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. Nationwide restrictions weren’t meant to reduce the number of cases of COVID-19. It was just to delay and spread them out over time. Rather than a steep peak of cases, a gentle,
or flattened hill was the goal.
“It allows health departments and hospitals to be ready and not be overwhelmed with patients with COVID,” Hawes said. “The real worry early in the epidemic was how quickly this would ramp up and overwhelm the hospital staff and resources and ICUs.”
While the medical system has been able to take advantage of the slowdown in infections, so have other segments of society.
Businesses from restaurants to meat-packing plants are devising and implementing protocols designed to reduce infections between employees and the public.
“Flattening the curve also allows both medical professionals and businesses to learn what’s happening in other places and prepare for the best approach,” Hawes said. But the cost to businesses and workers has been enormous.
Unemployment is the highest its been since the Great Depression. Even the medical industry has
laid off and furloughed employees.
Testing is crucial in determining how widespread the pandemic has become, Hawes said. It’s the third type of test, serological, that most interests Hawes.
“It’ll be more about antibody testing to see who in the past has been infected, who might be immune,” Hawes said. “It’ll really inform what happened over the past two months in terms of transmission. What proportion of people were infected but didn’t have symptoms.”
For instance, testing could show how many young people were infected but were asymptomatic. Different policies could be developed for different demographics beyond the current ones that urge vulnerable groups to be more cautious.
Hawes understands that the public wants answers now. Widespread antibody testing will help, he said. “It’s frustrating, but we’re bound to learn more,” he said.
Social distancing is not only the most visible weapon in the fight against SARS-CoV-2, Hawes thinks it’s also the most effective.
“The fewer people that are infected who come into contact with uninfected people, the less likely we are to transmit it,” he said.
Masks are the proverbial two-way street. They can help prevent an infected person from spreading the disease, and they can help prevent an uninfected person from getting it. If you go out in public, it doesn’t matter which group you fall into.
“It doesn’t take much to wear a mask,” Hawes said. “It doesn’t take much to social distance.”