As we discussed in class yesterday, it’s critical to be informed as to why certain measures have been taken to help our entire society reduce risk in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak:
“What epidemiologists fear most is the health care system becoming overwhelmed by a sudden explosion of illness that requires more people to be hospitalized than it can handle. In that scenario, more people will die because there won’t be enough hospital beds or ventilators to keep them alive.
A disastrous inundation of hospitals can likely be averted with protective measures we’re now seeing more of — closing schools, canceling mass gatherings, working from home, self-quarantine, avoiding crowds — to keep the virus from spreading fast.
Epidemiologists call this strategy of preventing a huge spike in cases ‘flattening the curve,’ and it looks like this:
