流行病学家说，美国第一波冠状病毒死亡的90％，本来是可以避免的。
13 min ago
90% of first wave of US coronavirus deaths could have been prevented, epidemiologists say
From CNN Health’s Shelby Lin Erdman
A social distancing sign stands in front of the deli counter at a supermarket in Princeton, Illinois on April 16. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The US government issued social distancing guidelines, including closing schools and limiting groups of people to no more than 10, on March 16 to combat the expanding coronavirus threat.
But a pair of epidemiologists say that 90% of the first wave of cumulative Covid-19 deaths in the United States, now totaling more than 36,000, could have been prevented
if social distancing measures had been put in place just two weeks earlier — at the beginning of March.
Nicholas Jewell, chair of biostatistics and epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and epidemiology research fellow at Imperial College London, Britta Jewell, analyzed the numbers from the popular disease model the White House is using from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
The goal was to see the pattern of the rate of growth of deaths and project what that pattern would have been a week or two earlier, assuming that social distancing had begun.
What were their findings? If social distancing was in place in the US on March 2, when just 11 Covid-19 deaths had been reported, and assuming that the current model projections are reasonable, then 90% of Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented, Jewell told CNN.
Had social distancing measures gone into effect just a week earlier, 60% of the current deaths could have been prevented, he said.
Jewell said, arguably, it may have been impossible to impose significant social distancing measures any sooner across the entire country. “And I’m not arguing that they should have been imposed then or it was a mistake not to because there are other considerations in imposing those policies,” he said.
www.glassdoor.ca
