Coronavirus

[Gregmal]

This is obviously a complex issue and one not to be taken lightly. Its also an interesting case study of what happens when you give finance guys cool looking charts, trendy buzz words, and Twitter(the land where you can find any number of experts with opinions that support your own already conceived conclusions). Fun times.

 

Ive also found interesting that at first, the narrative was, China botched this. Then, it was China cant be trusted. Now, its China handled this better than we could. The truth, who really knows. But South Koreas figures are promising. As are several other countries. Italy on the other hand, a mess. But didn't we already know Italy was a mess even before the virus?

 

 

[Read the Footnotes]

I think it would be good to remember that there are several people here that are professionals in the field and that many people choose not to include or divulge their resume and qualifications on this board.

 

Plus there are a few who specialize in healthcare investments.

 

I suspect there are also several healthcare analysts or healthcare fund managers. There are also people with advance statistical training. There are many faculty members here in medical fields or related fields.

 

Finally, good ideas, well reasoned arguments, and the truth should never be required to be accompanied by a resume to be recognized for what they are. I'm glad Bill Gates isn't letting his lack of a formal medical or epidemiological training stand in his way. I'm also glad he knows the limits of his circle of competence and admits that he knows less than the experts that surround him and trusts their input.

 

[John Hjorth]

The content of this topic here on CoBF is simply awesome! -Thank you to all! [Nobody forgotten, nobody mentioned.]

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

[Now I'll shut up & go back to reading mode again ...]

 

 

 

[Gregmal]

https://nypost.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-vaccine-could-be-ready-by-april-chinese-officials-say/

 

Interesting. I guess thats the upside to having this escape from a lab....they've already been developing a cure and the normal 12-24 month clock it typically takes started years ago..j/k

[Viking]

Ok, this is an investing board and everyone wants to know where the stock market goes from here.

 

What is the key measure Trump is using to inform himself how well he is doing? My guess is the stock market.  It fell as low as - 20% yesterday (not good, need to do something) and was up today (good day, doing the right thing).

 

I want to be fair, Trump also has mentioned testing. He has repeatedly said the numbers are low, ‘nothing to see here’ kind of thing.

 

My  guess is the US will need to start to ramp up its response in the coming weeks in a major way. What is going to get Trump on board? One thing. Lower stock prices. What number will finally get Trumps attention? 25% decline? Probably not. 30% should do it. What a crazy, crazy world to even contemplate this :-)

 

PS: i would love to hear from someone who is familiar with Soros and reflexivity and how they are triangulating the virus, US response, Trump and the stock market :-)

 

PS2: by mentioning Trump i am not trying to politicize the discussion. He is the President and appears to be very involved in execution of the total US response. He looks to me to be the key single figure. So to discuss what is going on and where it all goes from here your assumptions about what the President does are key.

[Jurgis]

Where do I stand?

 

I don't have much to say that has not been said here by multiple people. But to summarize briefly:

 

- Eradication through containment (which is what happened with SARS presumably) is very likely doomed by now.

- If there is no eradication through containment, then it is possible the virus will stay around for long time or forever. I am not an expert if/how widely distributed viruses could disappear. There might be mechanisms apart from everyone getting (some) immunity eventually.

- Containment through preventative measures/testing/quarantine/lockdowns is likely beneficial to flatten the infection curve and to provide time for vaccine/drug development and testing. I believe that even if testing/quarantine/lockdowns don't stop the virus spread completely. So I don't agree that testing/quarantine/lockdowns are worthless. They can be targeted and implemented better or worse.

- I am not an expert on transmission speeds and have not run transmission models. It is pretty clear that transmission is not guaranteed, which explains why (some) infected people don't infect everyone they might have interacted with. There might be secondary factors why certain cases/patients/localities have higher transmission rate than others. I think this is one contentious topic between people who think "it's not a big deal", people who think "it is a big deal", people who think "40%/70%/everyone will be infected", people who think "we should test more", people who think "tests won't help", etc.

- IMO mortality rates and possible mortality differences by countries are also not fully explained yet. We can only hope that they are low, even though Italian data so far has been scary.

- The two points above may explain the (rhetorical?) questions like "if this is so bad, how come we are not all dead yet"? If not, get data, run a model and publish results in NEJM.

- Some people argue about a large number of unreported mild/asymptomatic cases. IMO random and extensive testing in S. Korea/Taiwan/possibly China seems to indicate that there is no large number of unreported mild/asymptomatic cases. Unless the tests don't detect them.

 

I'm not gonna make predictions this time. Well, maybe just the prediction in first bullet above.

For anyone interested in past predictions, here is what I said on Jan 28:

https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/coronavirus/msg393772/#msg393772

(usually I'm way worse in predicting and I would have been happy to be wrong... China might be doing better than I expected...).

[Guest]

You're trolling me now?

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I just dislike ageism/sexism/racism and try to call it out when I see it.

 

You should be more tolerant and accepting. Your evolutionary instinct of disliking those things is neither more "right" or "wrong" than those folks who like those things. The folks have just as much insight into the right way to live as anyone else does. Why force (by "calling it out") your arbitrary values on others?

 

I don't believe any of those things. I don't know why you're parodying moral relativism at me.

 

Don't believe any of what things? You don't believe in moral relativism?

[StubbleJumper]

You're trolling me now?

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I just dislike ageism/sexism/racism and try to call it out when I see it.

 

You should be more tolerant and accepting. Your evolutionary instinct of disliking those things is neither more "right" or "wrong" than those folks who like those things. The folks have just as much insight into the right way to live as anyone else does. Why force (by "calling it out") your arbitrary values on others?

 

I don't believe any of those things. I don't know why you're parodying moral relativism at me.

 

Don't believe any of what things? You don't believe in moral relativism?

 

Nothing "ageist" was said to begin with.  Liberty has clashed with me once or twice in the past month and I suspect he's looking for a scrap, just for the purpose of looking for a scrap.  You can demonstrate the inferiority of your opponent if you show that he is weaker on the "wokeness" scale.  That's not unusual, but it's not emotionally mature either.  He is one of the people in this discussion who is most certain of the correctness of his viewpoint, which, in my opinion, is dangerous.  We are all operating under a situation of uncertainty, and those who are convinced that they have found the sole truth have vociferously denounced alternate viewpoints.  We are all stupid because we disagree with certain assumptions.

 

 

SJ

[mloub]

The medical reports from Italy should serve as a warning for healthcare systems everywhere. I have to say, the attitude that the Italian situation is somehow symptomatic of Italian bureaucracy, or inefficiency, or whatever is unfortnate. The lesson from Italy is that to flatten the curve on this outbreak, governments and healthcare systems need to act swiftly and decisively in the early stages. There is nothing uniquely Italian in the difficulties they are now experiencing. If we don't focus on containment here, the same thing could happen to us.

 

The whole situation is like a fire in a building. You want to detect it and start fighting it as soon as possible - that's why we have sprinklers and smoke detectors, etc. But when it comes to public health, we seem to have gutted the systems that would help us quickly address an outbreak like this.

 

Folks who look at SARS sometimes draw false comfort from how quickly that disease was contained, but not many people know the story of why that was possible. The head of the WHO's Western Pacific Region at the time of the SARS outbreak was an Italian Doctor by the name of Carlo Urbani. When he received a report of an atypical viral pneumonia case in Vietnam, he hopped on the first plane and went to check for himself. It was Urbani who quickly realized that what he was seeing was a novel repiratory virus. When nurses and other medical staff became ill, he examined them too and collected samples that allowed the WHO to raise the first alarms about SARS. Urbani's dispatches from the field identifyingt SARS and the samples he collected helped give the world a jump start on developing testing and containment strategies.

 

Urbani risked his own life to collect those samples and ultimately contracted SARS himself and died. Now imagine if someone else was at Urbani's post and responded to the first reports by brushing them off, or sending some lackey to take a look, and wasting precious weeks and months in the process.

 

Or worse yet, imagine if Urbani was detained and told not to discuss the outbreak like Li Wenliang was in Wuhan after he raised the first alarm in late December when there were only a handful of cases at the Wuhan fish market.

 

It is not too late for us to bend the trendlines in North America closer to those in South Korea, and away from those in Italy, but we have to shake off our complacency and demand better from our political leaders. They are flailing about with no clear idea what to do.

 

There is a rule of thumb in medicine when faced with a catastrophic injury or situation, focus on the basics. We call them the ABCs: airway, breathing, circulation. You do not move off of the ABCs until you've made sure that they are all secured and stable. The ABCs of this outbreak would be A) Identifying as many infected people as possible by testing symptomatic patients regardless of travel history, B) Isolating those infected people as quickly as possible, C) tracing all known contacts of infected people and asking them to self-quarantine; and then repeat. Our governments should be mobilizing any and all resources at their disposal to accomplish A-C; like the Koreans did in their country. We are not anywhere near doing enough, and time is quickly running out.

 

M.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LC]

It is not too late for us to bend the trendlines in North America closer to those in South Korea, and away from those in Italy, but we have to shake off our complacency and demand better from our political leaders. They are flailing about with no clear idea what to do.

 

There is a rule of thumb in medicine when faced with a catastrophic injury or situation, focus on the basics. We call them the ABCs: airway, breathing, circulation. You do not move off of the ABCs until you've made sure that they are all secured and stable. The ABCs of this outbreak would be 1) Identifying as many infected people as possible, 2) Isolating those infected people as quickly as possible, 3) tracing all known contacts of infected people and asking them to self-quarantine; and then repeat. Our governments should be mobilizing any and all resources at their disposal to accomplish 1-3; like the Koreans did in their country. We are not anywhere near doing enough, and time is quickly running out.

 

Well said.

[DocSnowball]

I think it would be good to remember that there are several people here that are professionals in the field and that many people choose not to include or divulge their resume and qualifications on this board.

 

Plus there are a few who specialize in healthcare investments.

 

I suspect there are also several healthcare analysts or healthcare fund managers. There are also people with advance statistical training. There are many faculty members here in medical fields or related fields.

 

Finally, good ideas, well reasoned arguments, and the truth should never be required to be accompanied by a resume to be recognized for what they are. I'm glad Bill Gates isn't letting his lack of a formal medical or epidemiological training stand in his way. I'm also glad he knows the limits of his circle of competence and admits that he knows less than the experts that surround him and trusts their input.

 

That's kind of you to say. No reason to be overconfident just because any one is in the medical field, they may not know what they don't know or be overconfident because of it. This is a great place to share ideas, try to disconfirm one's own thinking, and be in a community (helps T-cell function which may help survive the virus, so continue to be kind to each other).

 

My take is in the West we are willingly paying an economic price to save lives of the elderly and healthcare workers, especially after China set the tone. This too shall pass, at the end with not a lot of mortalities given what will be done to intervene, and we can all say we were right depending on how we see it. One mistake to avoid is trying to fit this in one's mental model of flu or SARS or whatever; this virus has it's own model and we don't fully know it yet. Just my 2c.

[KCLarkin]

There is a rule of thumb in medicine when faced with a catastrophic injury or situation, focus on the basics. We call them the ABCs: airway, breathing, circulation. You do not move off of the ABCs until you've made sure that they are all secured and stable. The ABCs of this outbreak would be 1) Identifying as many infected people as possible, 2) Isolating those infected people as quickly as possible, 3) tracing all known contacts of infected people and asking them to self-quarantine; and then repeat. Our governments should be mobilizing any and all resources at their disposal to accomplish 1-3; like the Koreans did in their country. We are not anywhere near doing enough, and time is quickly running out.

 

Not sure why Othopa doesn't understand these basics. I mean the facts s/he is stating are true, but just totally ignorant of basic math. It really boggles the mind.

 

[Guest cherzeca]

This is obviously a complex issue and one not to be taken lightly. Its also an interesting case study of what happens when you give finance guys cool looking charts, trendy buzz words, and Twitter(the land where you can find any number of experts with opinions that support your own already conceived conclusions). Fun times.

 

Ive also found interesting that at first, the narrative was, China botched this. Then, it was China cant be trusted. Now, its China handled this better than we could. The truth, who really knows. But South Koreas figures are promising. As are several other countries. Italy on the other hand, a mess. But didn't we already know Italy was a mess even before the virus?

 

new euro credit crisis in the works?  Italy is considering debt payment holidays on consumer loans mortgages etc.  Italian banks are already crap, this could snowball into a banking crisis in Italy, then eu, then a sovereign crisis and so on and so forth.  or just raise new tensions for an Italy exit, etc. 

[Read the Footnotes]

The medical reports from Italy should serve as a warning for healthcare systems everywhere. I have to say, the attitude that the Italian situation is somehow symptomatic of Italian bureacracy, or inefficiency, or whatever is unfortnate. The lesson from Italy is that to flatten the curve on this outbreak, governments and healthcare systems need to act swiftly and decisively in the early stages. There is nothing uniquely Italian in the difficulties they are now experiencing. If we don't focus on containment here, the same thing could happen to us.

 

The whole situation is like a fire in a building. You want to detect it and start fighting it as soon as possible - that's why we have sprinklers and smoke detectors, etc. But when it comes to public health, we seem to have gutted the systems that would help us quickly address an outbreak like this.

 

Folks who look at SARS sometimes draw false comfort from how quickly that disease was contained, but not many people know the story of why that was possible. The head of the WHO's Western Pacific Region at the time of the SARS outbreak was an Italian Doctor by the name of Carlo Urbani. When he received a report of an atypical viral pneumonia case in Vietnam, he hopped on the first plane and went to check for himself. It was Urbani who quickly realized that what he was seeing was a novel repiratory virus. When nurses and other medical staff became ill, he examined them too and collected samples that allowed the WHO to raise the first alarms about SARS. Urbani's dispatches from the field identifyingt SARS and the samples he collected helped give the world a jump start on developing testing and containment strategies.

 

Urbani risked his own life to collect those samples and ultimately contracted SARS himself and died. Now imagine if someone else was at Urbani's post and responded to the first reports by brushing them off, or sending some lackey to take a look, and wasting precious weeks and months in the process.

 

Or worse yet, imagine if Urbani was detained and told not to discuss the outbreak like Li Wenliang was in Wuhan after he raised the first alarm in late December when there were only a handful of cases at the Wuhan fish market.

 

It is not too late for us to bend the trendlines in North America closer to those in South Korea, and away from those in Italy, but we have to shake off our complacency and demand better from our political leaders. They are flailing about with no clear idea what to do.

 

There is a rule of thumb in medicine when faced with a catastrophic injury or situation, focus on the basics. We call them the ABCs: airway, breathing, circulation. You do not move off of the ABCs until you've made sure that they are all secured and stable. The ABCs of this outbreak would be 1) Identifying as many infected people as possible, 2) Isolating those infected people as quickly as possible, 3) tracing all known contacts of infected people and asking them to self-quarantine; and then repeat. Our governments should be mobilizing any and all resources at their disposal to accomplish 1-3; like the Koreans did in their country. We are not anywhere near doing enough, and time is quickly running out.

 

M.

 

Thank you Mloub. All well said and important to be heard.

 

I hope people will read this post and do what they can to move the goal posts on their local level.

 

If readers of this post feel like reflecting on this more once you are in lockdown, or after this is over, I would recommend Michael Lewis's book The Fifth Risk. Michael Lewis really reached the next level with this book. Instead of writing about the bubble and the crash after it was over, he actually predicted it this time.

 

In the case of Liars Poker, The New New Thing, Panic, The Big Short, and Boomerang you had to wait months to read the Michael Lewis interpretation after the fact. In this case, you can read The Fifth Risk as it actually happens to you.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-15/lifesaving-coast-guard-scientist-reflects-on-government-service

 

 

[Gregmal]

Have yet to find a person not leaning towards selling the news on Donny’s big announcement. Little to do with the potential economic effects, and much more to do with his penchant for being a grand exaggerator and salesman.

 

I'm not leaning towards selling it.

 

This isn't the Spanish flu which primarily targeted people in their 20s,30s,40s and largely left the children and elderly alone.  The level of panic will subside once the general public comes to understand this.

 

I am fearful for my parents who are in their 70s and 80s (my father has had pneumonia in the past 6 months) and I have two close social contacts with stage 4 cancer undergoing chemotherapy.  However, I don't fear for myself, my wife or my kids . (I remarried in January).

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/white-house-wont-explain-how-it-would-pay-for-trumps-proposed-payroll-tax-holiday.html

 

Underwhelming... futures -500

 

Trump is still a predictable putz. Very, very large numbers...details? Nil.

[Spekulatius]

The medical reports from Italy should serve as a warning for healthcare systems everywhere. I have to say, the attitude that the Italian situation is somehow symptomatic of Italian bureaucracy, or inefficiency, or whatever is unfortnate. The lesson from Italy is that to flatten the curve on this outbreak, governments and healthcare systems need to act swiftly and decisively in the early stages. There is nothing uniquely Italian in the difficulties they are now experiencing. If we don't focus on containment here, the same thing could happen to us.

 

The whole situation is like a fire in a building. You want to detect it and start fighting it as soon as possible - that's why we have sprinklers and smoke detectors, etc. But when it comes to public health, we seem to have gutted the systems that would help us quickly address an outbreak like this.

 

Folks who look at SARS sometimes draw false comfort from how quickly that disease was contained, but not many people know the story of why that was possible. The head of the WHO's Western Pacific Region at the time of the SARS outbreak was an Italian Doctor by the name of Carlo Urbani. When he received a report of an atypical viral pneumonia case in Vietnam, he hopped on the first plane and went to check for himself. It was Urbani who quickly realized that what he was seeing was a novel repiratory virus. When nurses and other medical staff became ill, he examined them too and collected samples that allowed the WHO to raise the first alarms about SARS. Urbani's dispatches from the field identifyingt SARS and the samples he collected helped give the world a jump start on developing testing and containment strategies.

 

Urbani risked his own life to collect those samples and ultimately contracted SARS himself and died. Now imagine if someone else was at Urbani's post and responded to the first reports by brushing them off, or sending some lackey to take a look, and wasting precious weeks and months in the process.

 

Or worse yet, imagine if Urbani was detained and told not to discuss the outbreak like Li Wenliang was in Wuhan after he raised the first alarm in late December when there were only a handful of cases at the Wuhan fish market.

 

It is not too late for us to bend the trendlines in North America closer to those in South Korea, and away from those in Italy, but we have to shake off our complacency and demand better from our political leaders. They are flailing about with no clear idea what to do.

 

There is a rule of thumb in medicine when faced with a catastrophic injury or situation, focus on the basics. We call them the ABCs: airway, breathing, circulation. You do not move off of the ABCs until you've made sure that they are all secured and stable. The ABCs of this outbreak would be A) Identifying as many infected people as possible, B) Isolating those infected people as quickly as possible, C) tracing all known contacts of infected people and asking them to self-quarantine; and then repeat. Our governments should be mobilizing any and all resources at their disposal to accomplish A-C; like the Koreans did in their country. We are not anywhere near doing enough, and time is quickly running out.

 

M.

 

Thank you for your well reasoned post. I also read the news from Italy from German sources and it seem clear that their health care system is breaking down under the onslaught of patients and possibly some panic too.

I don’t think we should dismiss Italy and in particular Northern Italy just as a badly managed country. The reason why Italy got hit too hard is because they got hit first (besides China) and didn’t have time to prepare (as German disease experts point out). Other countries, including the US don’t have that excuse. Germany is at risk too with several outbreak clusters, and at least they have clear escalation protocols in place that I believe are going to be used as necessary. Italy didn’t have they in place and that’s why they are paying the price.

 

[willie2013]

If you assume Buffett and Gates are two weeks in front of everyone else and they are collaborative close friends and you assume the combination of their knowledge (economic plus virus) is high percentage correct, why is Gates advocating testing? It does seem he relied on really bad CFR #s.

[John Hjorth]

Have yet to find a person not leaning towards selling the news on Donny’s big announcement. Little to do with the potential economic effects, and much more to do with his penchant for being a grand exaggerator and salesman.

 

I'm not leaning towards selling it.

 

This isn't the Spanish flu which primarily targeted people in their 20s,30s,40s and largely left the children and elderly alone.  The level of panic will subside once the general public comes to understand this.

 

I am fearful for my parents who are in their 70s and 80s (my father has had pneumonia in the past 6 months) and I have two close social contacts with stage 4 cancer undergoing chemotherapy.  However, I don't fear for myself, my wife or my kids . (I remarried in January).

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/white-house-wont-explain-how-it-would-pay-for-trumps-proposed-payroll-tax-holiday.html

 

Underwhelming... futures -500

 

Trump is still a predictable putz. Very, very large numbers...details? Nil.

 

It reminds me of a post long time ago here on CoBF, by rb, about indebted, but highly edutated US youth, who really didn't had a chance to move on in adulthood in a positive way. As a society [& for every single voter], every voter has to make up each own mind. [WYSIWYG].

[Gregmal]

Funny, my wife was reading on the iPad and groaned "I just want to read normal news and the only thing, everywhere, is this coronavirus stuff"...my thoughts? Fucking tell me about it. Try being a stock market participant the past two weeks!

 

 

Anyhow, finished my nightly outreach on this dreaded topic with a few contacts

 

From an NJ hospital with 3(now 2 cases after 1 death)

 

paraphrasing

 

Doctors dont really know what they are doing. They are constantly in contact with people over in China seeking advice. Hardly overwhelmed, but simply don't have a clue as no one has ever seen this type of thing before.

 

Some are totally freaked out, some are of the thought this is not that big of a deal if handled properly.

 

The main dude who's been all over the news is still in iffy shape, although they are optimistic he peaked yesterday.

 

 

 

 

[Liberty]

 

 

In a call between the two foreign ministers, China agreed to supply Italy with 1,000 ventillators and 2 million masks. Additionally, they are donating (!) them 100k respirators, 20k protective suits, and 50k test kits as part of "massive aid" package.

[Viking]

OK, we know Washington State is at the epicenter of the outbreak in the US. The Governor gave an update today. Start watching at the 11:30 mark if you are pressed for time. It is sobering stuff. He clearly knows what is coming and he is trying to get the people of Washington State on the same page. My hat goes off to anyone in public service at this time.

 

- https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/inslee-up-to-64000-coronavirus-cases-in-wash-by-may-if-we-dont-take-action

 

He is estimating Washinton State has at least 1,000 cases as of today but admits they really do not know. He said they expect the number (whatever it is) to double every 5 to 8 days. He said they are looking at all measures to slow the outbreak. He said if they do not find a way to slow the outbreak it will simply overwhelm the state's medical system. He said (a couple of times) that what the state does will be based on science. He telegraphed that much more will be coming perhaps as soon as tomorrow. He clearly is trying to quickly educate and get the population behind the measures that are coming. Good for him for being transparent and moving as quickly as possible.

 

I noticed that confirmed cases in the US have just ballooned to just under 1,000. We could be at a tipping point as we watch confirmed cases double every 3-5 days until social distancing/lock-downs policies in the US are announced.

 

The good news is we all know the stock market is forward-looking and prices reflect everything that is currently known. So not to worry over the next couple of days as this plays out as expected. (Edit: My poor attempt at sarcasm.)

 

 

 

[arcube]

Hopefully this is a good addition to the information shared so far. Not sure when it was recorded.

 

 

 

Michael Osterholm is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease epidemiology. He is Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, a professor in the Technological Leadership Institute, College of Science and Engineering, and an adjunct professor in the Medical School, all at the University of Minnesota. Look for his book "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Deadly Germs" for more info. https://amzn.to/2IAzeLe

 

[Gregmal]

In respect to the NYC area, I dont even think many are waiting for government action. Check out all the big offices that have already ordered folks to work from home. Almost all the financial firms, including Point 72 and SkyBridge already have this in place.

 

Of course, Id gander the most at risk of catching this and brining it back here are the douchey financial charlatans who travel the world attending "conferences"(aka parties) on the company tab.

[merkhet]

Fairly good interview with Scott Gottlieb

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/03/09/coronavirus-past-containment-but-usa-can-limit-epidemic-scott-gottlieb/5007417002/

[SharperDingaan]

Really dumb question ...

 

If you get the virus, and then get over it with no ill effects (ie: you're healthy), are you now immunized against that particular strain of virus, or can you get it again? The ask is because if you're now immunized, the areas where this virus has been, must now be developing a progressively more robust herd immunization as time goes on. It becomes progressively harder for the virus to spread in those places, hence the numbers of new infections/deaths drop like a brick.

 

It would also explain why authorities have been mass quarantining in the millions. The aim is large numbers of mild cases that do not require assistance, to create a herd large enough upon exit, that it makes it harder for the virus to spread. If you can't quickly and reliably make and administer large quantities of vaccine, isn't this the next best mass alternative?

 

SD