Recovery depends on the strength of the immune system
The better we get at interventions to identify and isolate specific people with the virus, the less we should need to rely on interventions that isolate the entire population. […] South Korea and Singapore have been successfully addressing their coronavirus epidemics with less extensive social-distancing measures than are currently seen in Italy, France, and parts of the U.S., in part because of their effective testing and surveillance regimes. The Financial Times reports today on the town of Vò, Italy, which successfully stopped its local outbreak though a strategy that involved widespread testing of the population and isolation of those who tested positive, even as the rest of Northern Italy did not fare so well. […]
It is also possible that effective antiviral treatments to treat the sick will be available much sooner than a vaccine that protects the healthy. This is partly because ongoing trials are testing whether already existing antiviral drugs, approved and on the market to fight other viruses, can reduce the severity of COVID-19 and save lives.
Evidence is starting to emerge that temperature and humidity do make a difference in the ability of the virus to infect large numbers. […]
Some Southeast Asian nations with close business and tourism links to China have seen surprisingly few cases, even if you assume their less developed public health systems are missing infections. Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines have each seen fewer cases than Estonia, Slovenia or Iceland, despite a combined population more than 100 times as large. […] In extreme cold and very hot and wet conditions the virus is “largely absent,” the researchers from Spain, Portugal and Finland wrote, meaning that people in tropical and polar climates are unlikely to see local transmission of cases. […]
Another pre-print study by four Beijing-based researchers uploaded to the arXiv server last week comes to a similar conclusion after analyzing the infection rates in 100 Chinese cities. […]
Both studies are still just computer models, and neither has been through peer review. On top of that, even a reduced rate of infection will only slow, rather than halt the spread of this pandemic.
related:
Bidet sales soar as toilet paper sells out amid coronavirus fears
Surveillance Company Says It’s Deploying ‘Coronavirus-Detecting’ Cameras in US
