UncoverAg00 said:
I guess this is where I don't understand. I thought that the R0 was essentially a simple metric to measure the transmission rate and generally speaking a value close to or below 1 wouldn't be considered pandemic levels. Up until today, the CFR coupled with a R0 made this thing kinda scary. Now, I don't know. Obviously I'm misunderstanding, so I'very open to someone pointing me to a reference or simply explaining how critical this value is in the grand scheme of things. Up to this point I thought it was more important than what it appears now. Basically, given all the updated #'s, I'm now struggling to understand how this explains the quarantines and their necessity.
Not an epidemiologist, but...
R0 is almost certainly some kind of population statistic and a representation of nothing more than observed pattern. As such, it's value is going to fluctuate, and likely completely change as more data are available. I also don't think it's representative of any kind of fixed physiological processes. Also as such, it's almost certainly going to be confounded by environmental, behavioral, and circumstantial factors.
To cone's point, it's probably not suggestive that every thing is peachy. Just that there are things that can be made manageable, even without pharmacological interventions.