20/03/2020
Well explained. Why taking social distancing seriously is so important. You don’t want our doctors to be in the position to decide who is going to die.
Article:
„Italy’s coronavirus death toll has now surpassed China’s, with the country leaving it too late to do one thing that could have helped stop the spread.
The country is working to take control of the situation but Professor Robert Booy from the University of Sydney, said there is one mistake that is making it harder to control the spread.
“They recognised the problem too late,” Professor Booy said in a video released by the The Australian Academy of Science.
“If you’ve got a doubling every three days as they might have had, you can go from 1000 to 4000 by the end of the week and by the end of the second week you can go from 4000 to 16000.
“The difference between 1000 and 16,000 is only potentially two weeks.”
Australia can learn from how other countries have been impacted by the coronavirus, with Professor Booy saying the focus needs to be on flattening the curve of the outbreak.
“Flattening the curve is really important. It’s going to be how we will be able to cope with this pandemic,” he said.
“What it means is that instead of the rate of rise being very rapid, anywhere between doubling every three to six days, we cut it back to doubling maybe every two to three weeks.
“Instead of the number of cases rising so rapidly, and the healthcare system can’t cope, instead of that, we keep it at a level where the hospitalisation and intensive care admissions are able to be coped with by medical personnel.”
All the recommendations made by the government including social distancing, bans on mass gatherings and not shaking hands will all help “dramatically reduce transmission”, Professor Booy said.
Social distancing, all the measures that have been put in place, not shaking hands. Dramatically reduce transmission.“