“I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.”

だから理論的にはコロナ問題の答はわかっていて「人類の60％がコロナウイルスに感染して免疫をもつ」。それまでは封じ込めなんかやっても無駄。感染速度の最適化問題しか意味はない。 https://t.co/rBBnAFYgUw

— 池田信夫 (@ikedanob) March 20, 2020

The disease (known as COVID-19) seems to have a fatality rate of less than 2 percent—exponentially lower than most outbreaks that make global news. The virus has raised alarm not despite that low fatality rate, but because of it.


The Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch is exacting in his diction, even for an epidemiologist. Twice in our conversation he started to say something, then paused and said, “Actually, let me start again.” So it’s striking when one of the points he wanted to get exactly right was this: “I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.”


Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses. “It’s likely that many will have mild disease, or may be asymptomatic,” he said. As with influenza, which is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care. (Overall, about 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)


Ultimately some pandemic responses will require opening borders, not closing them. At some point the expectation that any area will escape effects of COVID-19 must be abandoned: The disease must be seen as everyone’s problem.

この一年で、世界の４０－７０％の人が感染。封じ込みは不可能。といって、感染した人みんな重体に陥るわけではない。大抵のひとは軽い病気ですむか、症状もない程度。国境を封鎖したら感染しないですむという問題でもない、と。

ーーワクチンも12-18ヶ月とか言われているけど、なかなか大変そうだし。

重症化しそうな老人やら慢性病持ちの人たちは、自分たちが感染しないように注意して行動し、周囲も感染させないように注意して行動する。


ほかの人は感染するのは不可避、くらいにおもっていたほうがいいかもね。