A Harvard Study Says Social Distancing May Last Until 2022. It’s Not as Grim as It Sounds.

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A new study in Science Magazine about the transmission of the coronavirus sparked a wave of alarming headlines Wednesday declaring that social distancing mandates may have to remain in place into 2022. But the reality may not actually be so grim: The researchers’ model does not account for other ways of beating back the virus, such as effective medication that could prevent infected people from needing hospitalization, or even a vaccine.

A major focus of the effort to “flatten the curve” is to reduce the strain on the health care system. The new study, conducted by a team of researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, finds that under current critical care capacities, the pandemic could stretch into 2022. But, the authors write, “Increasing critical care capacity allowed population immunity to be accumulated more rapidly, reducing the overall duration of the epidemic and the total length of social distancing measures.” In other words, the more hospital beds, ventilators, and medical personnel we have to fight the virus, the less time we may be forced to spend cooped up in our homes.

And there are other steps the scientific community can take to stop the spread of the virus. “New therapeutics, vaccines, or other interventions such as aggressive contact tracing and quarantine—impractical now in many places but more practical once case numbers have been reduced and testing scaled up—could alleviate the need for stringent social distancing to maintain control of the epidemic,” the authors of the study write.

The study also assumes that the average number of people infected by someone with the virus is between 2 and 2.5. The number may actually be higher than that, which, MIT Technology Review points out, would be a good thing: If mild cases of the virus are more prevalent than we’d thought, herd immunity would be possible sooner.

In any event, social distancing will most likely not be a continuous reality over the next two years. The authors of the study envision intermittent phases of social distancing tailored to the prevalence of outbreaks and the preparedness of health care systems in specific communities. 

“Keeping in mind that our goal is getting up to population-level immunity, in the absence of a vaccine or potentially other types of interventions, what we might see is this kind of on-off, intermittent distancing,” Yonatan Grad, one of the paper’s authors, told CNN. “And to get up to population immunity—again, that end point—would take until 2022.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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