It will be interesting to see how we view this in the years to come. I was here, and had certain (once reviled) views, so I remember these closely:
1. Masks don't work! -> Nope, they do.
2. You need training to make masks work! -> Nope, you don't.
3. If you don't wear your mask perfectly, you're going to get the disease. The outcome is binary. -> Doesn't look that way.
There are a few still in line to be determined, supposedly:
* This disease is novel in ways that no other disease is. So a large percentage of those who get it will experience life-long adverse effects causing substantial loss of QALYs. -> I don't think so, but we'll see. Sure, a few people here and there will have life-long breathing issues but nearly everyone will have practically identical QoL as they did before.
* Single group activities are the biggest determiners of whether there will be an increase in cases in America. -> I don't think so. I think it'll be whether we have large scale openings. i.e. protests are not as big a deal as letting people go to restaurants (the latter will dwarf the former)
* Outdoor activities are spreading the disease at a substantial rate in America. -> I don't think so. It's not the beach-goers. It's the guys mostly indoors.
We'll see. Ultimately, thinking in Bayesian terms, this virus is less likely to be novel in multiple ways than it is likely to be novel in one way. So far, that looks to have been a good assumption. Let's see what else it holds up on. There was always a lot of "We don't know enough. This could be the end of civilization" going around and I think we always knew enough. We did and we continue to.
1. Masks don't work! -> Nope, they do.
2. You need training to make masks work! -> Nope, you don't.
3. If you don't wear your mask perfectly, you're going to get the disease. The outcome is binary. -> Doesn't look that way.
There are a few still in line to be determined, supposedly:
* This disease is novel in ways that no other disease is. So a large percentage of those who get it will experience life-long adverse effects causing substantial loss of QALYs. -> I don't think so, but we'll see. Sure, a few people here and there will have life-long breathing issues but nearly everyone will have practically identical QoL as they did before.
* Single group activities are the biggest determiners of whether there will be an increase in cases in America. -> I don't think so. I think it'll be whether we have large scale openings. i.e. protests are not as big a deal as letting people go to restaurants (the latter will dwarf the former)
* Outdoor activities are spreading the disease at a substantial rate in America. -> I don't think so. It's not the beach-goers. It's the guys mostly indoors.
We'll see. Ultimately, thinking in Bayesian terms, this virus is less likely to be novel in multiple ways than it is likely to be novel in one way. So far, that looks to have been a good assumption. Let's see what else it holds up on. There was always a lot of "We don't know enough. This could be the end of civilization" going around and I think we always knew enough. We did and we continue to.