Why doesn't the UK shut down now? Prevention better than (no) cure?
There's a doctor on Twitter (Dr Emma Hodcroft) who posted this...
Why are scientists alarmed when the first #COVID19 cases we hear of in a country are deaths? I thought it worth clarifying.
It's not because we worry the virus is "bad", "getting worse" or "changing". It's because #SARSCoV2 doesn't seem to lead to death very quickly
It seems like #SARSCoV2 infection takes about 3-4 weeks to overwhelm someone & lead to death - if it does, which for many it does not.
But this then implies that when we see deaths, those people have had the virus for weeks beforehand
And if no cases or only very few, well-tracable cases were detected during those weeks, #SARSCoV2 was circulating undetected.
And then only detected in some people who got ill enough to die. We know that's only a small fraction of the population
We don't know the answer to these questions exactly, but we don't need to in order to appreciate that seeing deaths first, or at time of diagnosis, is concerning to scientists & public health.
It's a sign that #SARSCoV2 is circulating more widely than we thought
This then marks a change in strategy, as we've seen in Italy, where it's very hard to retrace & take action, sometimes impossible. These efforts are still worthwhile, but harder than when detect #COVID19 cases earlier in the chain