But how long will it take for the coronavirus to chalk up equal or far larger numbers.
Now there's a question. Possible answers range from 3 months to never.
I dont know details of what been happening in the US, except the president seems to have stepped back and its up to individual states. In the UK, the government has a panel of experts it calls 'sage', which it asks for advice.
Sage initially said, mostly, they didnt know what would happen. But based upon inadequate data, the death rate and other stuff the chinese provided, they considered reasonable worst case 800,000 deaths in UK. Move on a month, and they said this might be reduced by 25-50% if all of several suggested measures were introduce. Around 10 March, they said this must be done within 2 weeks, and even so the NHS would be overrun by all the cases.
As far as i can see, the government did as instructed. Peak came and went, and left us at around only 50,000 deaths, 1/10 the prediction. Something went wrong. Emergency special built hospitals...never used.
Having been presumably told to prepare for a million patients, the NHS emptied its hospitals of ordinary patients. This was a serious mistake. People with covid ended up being sent to care homes full of other high risk people, spreading the infection. There was a big row about shortages of protective clothing. Very few NHS staff became seriously ill or died, no more than the general population, but the NHS does seem to have become a centre of infection not only to the old, but to the general community.
In the general community, the kings college phone app study estimate a peak of 2.1 million people with syptoms, at about a week after lockdown. This has fallen steadily ever since, and has been under control for weeks. However residual new infections seem to be coming from hospitals and care homes.(3 million people work in medicine or care)
I havent seen an analysis, but I would think between 1/4 and 1/2 the deaths were because of failures to properly protect the old. Well...more than that, but in terms of things which look like they might have been prevented. The NHS got ready to fight the wrong epidemic, because it was told to prepare for vast numbers which never arrived.
Risk from the disease approximately doubles every 6 years older you are. 95% of people who died in the Uk, had some other condition which made the effects worse. So even fit 90 year olds were by no means doomed. But these two facts were pretty much understood beforehand. It was known the bulk of deaths would be in this group. Strategy failed to protect them, but instead protected the young nearly as much, which was wholly pointless. If the fit working population had carried on working, wouldnt have increased the deaths much if at all.
The answer to your question depends what went wrong. It might be sage got the infection numbers right, but the death percentage wrong. If so, it is basically all over. Most people have had it.
Or they didnt do so badly on death percentage, but far fewer became sick. If so, it might come back.
Estimates of antibody production are around 17% in London and 5% nationally. But that might not be a useful number. Estimates of the total of asymptomatic cases have ranged from 40-85%. The huge question is how do they come about, and are they infectious? In one model, these are people who simply beat off the virus very easily, never become very infectious and never need to make antibodies. In another they simply dont get symptoms, but spread it just as much. The chinese thought they did spread it, and made it hard for them to track cases. But in reality they wouldnt have to be very infectious to sneak the disease through quarantine (but I also suspect this might have been a convenient excuse for the chines who simply failed to catch full blown cases). It is possible all these people really arent taking much part in the epidemic at all, so can basically be ignored. If you can ignore 85% of the people... that only leaves 15% to catch it, and on the numbers that would account for everyone in London. Epidemic over.
This is a city disease. We are told the closer you get to someone with it, the greater the chance they breathe on you and you catch it. So almost obviously it is a city disease, but where exactly does it get spread? Crowds...So pubs, clubs, theatres, parties, sports....and CROWDED COMMUTER TRAINS! Thats my guess, its the transport system. There has been a study in New York, suggesting its the tube system spreeding it. Rush hour tube in london, you are standing like sardines, breathing directly on each other.
It is possible that if all the commuters have already had it, much of the disease spread outside London will disappear too, because it was commuters going home across a huge chunk of south east and central England spreading it. Ditto it has centred on other Uk cities. In the countryside the spread rate R might quite naturally be less than 1, ie it will just die out.
Oh,and if the R is very uneven and depends on certain events to spread it where people get very close, then the people who most often are in such situations will have been the first to catch it. So even if a lot of people are potentially susceptible, if those at high risk of catching have already done so (eg all the commuters), then once again the disease will be deprived of a ways to spread...and die out. These are two scenarios why we wouldnt need a huge proportion immune to have achieved herd immuntiy and essentially stopped it being able to spread again.
If Sage have commented on this, we dont know. Their reports are secret.