That strategy only makes sense when there is a very limited facilities for testing:
The strategy shift essentially codifies the reality health departments have been living with for weeks; a shortage of tests and protective equipment amid rising demand and case numbers. It also puts into practice advice from many of America’s top medical experts, including CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, that a positive test result is not required to treat the symptoms.
LA and New York are on lockdown, so everyone is effectively on quarantined whether they have known exposure or not. In that sense the policy makes sense, but the economic cost is enormous.
I am getting ready to lock things down at the household in Pennsylvania and head down to North Carolina to spend the spring and early summer. My daughter and her husband have been working remotely from there for the last month. They live in the outer edge of the Philadelphia suburbs.
The trick with this coronavirus thing is to get plenty of sun and Vitamin C. If your are otherwise in good health, you will have little to fear even if you get infected.
But I will be well off the beaten path and can work remotely from there.
It should follow the regular coronavirus patterns then come back in the fall. They need to fast track a vaccine, sorry at this rate of freak out the county is not going to last another three months. Just saw were the mayor of Baltimore released a statement asking people to quit shooting each other because they need the beds for coronavirus patients.
Our whole economy is based on consumption and spending it will go belly up at this pace quicker than one thinks. The Feds only protective measure is to paper the economy with quantitative easing but even then people need to be working and buying things.
A worrying recent trend is that several tropical countries are starting to show signs of a local outbreak and not just the effects of travelers bringing the virus with them. Humid weather by itself may not be sufficient to prevent an outbreak.
Here are the graphs for India, Brazil, Vietnam, and the Philippines. One explanation for the recent growth of case in these countries is that many people are returning home from Europe or North America and are bringing the virus with them. Another is that testing is becoming more available. While the numbers are still small they all show a doubling in the total number of reported cases within the last week or so:
We need to be doing what’s in this paper (already posted above…will post again here). Getting aggressive we could be done in seven weeks with the more severe lockdown measures.
But we have to be smart and disciplined to do this.
Any other way is likely a disaster.
I like the analogy that we are going into battle blind and with no weapons.
There’s still time (albeit not much…less than a week) to do this…the model in this paper begins when known cases are almost twice what they are right now.
The Trump Administration is going off a really bad paper by Imperial College to inform their strategy. They need to dump it and see what countries that prove they know what they’re doing…South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and yes, even China…are doing and emulate them.
Why follow a bunch of Brits whose guidance already has ■■■■■■ over the UK once?
This is why the announcement of a 45 minute test is great news…it would be a great tool for this kind of strategy.
Yes, I think we have two alternatives. Either go with lockdowns similar to those outlined in the link, or start lining up bulldozers to dig mass graves.
If we do nothing, the economy should be fine, but probably 50 to 80% of the population will get the virus. With overwhelmed hospitals, the death rate could be 3% or higher since many people who have survived up to now required respirators. That would give something like 200 million cases and 5 million deaths or more.
The deaths would come mainly from the elderly and those with existing health problems. Children and healthy people of working age will see few fatalities. That is why I say the economy would be fine.
Interesting theory. Being out in Northwest where it rained just about everyday through Jan and Feb…you might want to rethink that theory. But again everyone is inside breathing the air from follow infected individuals passing the virus from to another at accelerated pace.
This strategy would also give the virus more chances to mutate…and then who knows whether this trend holds?
Now I will caveat this by saying it actually does NOT happen all that often that a mutation of a virus leads to a more deadly strain of said virus. Usually, it doesn’t change things appreciably and sometimes, like with SARS and MERS, it actually helps the pandemic peter out.
But you never know…the mutation that led to the second wave of the Spanish Flu was horrific…people would wake up healthy and be dead by nightfall.
And the author of this paper does go into economic costs and suggests a seven week crackdown might prove in the long run to be more cost effective…
He has a lot of good suggestions that if people would read and critique the paper, could lay the foundation for future policymakers to make better decisions when fighting a pandemic.
At best he’s raising questions that we should seriously discuss in the future.
Like I have said repeatedly…aside from nuclear war, a global pandemic is pretty much the only thing that can impact our entire global economy in very short order. The world isn’t what it was in 1918, where stocks only fell 11% and then shrugged off the effects of Spanish Flu.
We are more interconnected than ever before and rely on freedom of movement to make the global economy go.
Fighting pandemics has to be at the forefront of every nation’s policy from here on out.
Yes they don’t happen all that often, but when they do they leave devastating impacts.
And actually we have now had two in the last decade, and 3-4 other potential ones.
A problem that I see is that even if we get the coronavirus under control, a large portion of the rest of the world may not. Iran seems to be headed down the second path; there are already reports of them digging mass graves.
The dry climate in the Middle East may favor year-round transmission there.
Another wild card are tropical countries. As noted earlier, the number of cases in tropical areas has been small up until now but Brazil, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines have all seen their total number of cases double within the last week. Hopefully that is just a temporary anomaly associated with travelers from Europe.
You handle those with The Dance Phase of the paper I linked. That’s what is going on China and SK right now.
Stronger screening processes at airports. If you’re from a country that’s still in trouble, I’m sorry you submit yourself to more intensive screening and tracking.
It may be a requirement in the future that if you fly in a plane you must wear a mask and that planes have to be cleaned between flights.
Inconvenience? Yes. But a way of life until such time as a vaccine is in the offing or over time herd immunity does slowly build up.
Eventually this will die down. Pandemics always do, then settle into an endemic state or go away altogether for a while.
It baffles me that only Asian countries are allowed to beat the coronavirus. Let’s hope they do it I think everyone at the top even the mayors and governors are only willing to go so far like in New York. There all hoping that less people get sick but they are only prolonging the agony.
I saw reading and article the other day that was a hit punch, that most of us didn’t think about. We have heard about how horrible the situation is in Italy. And they were not in great shape before this tragedy. The article was saying that even if this all ended tomorrow in Italy that without a major bailout (Way more than Greece) that Italy was basically a failed nation economically at this point.
It’s not that only Asian countries were allowed to beat it.
It’s that they were the only ones that seemed to have the proper mindset to “beat it” (we should say “control it” because they haven’t beaten it yet. They are in the “Dance” phase of the article I linked there. China is dealing with new infections from repatriated people. South Korea has a new cluster popping up).
Probably because they’ve been through it before…plus in order to do it and not cause great economic dislocation, you have to allow a few illiberal things to happen…things had for a Western open nations to do.
I should be more clear when I am referring to beating it I mean to getting past the peak phase, There going to have to do something in the west or the economies will go to complete hell. This country would be truly scary if the government collapsed. Where I live for instance social cohesion is nothing like it is were my family is from. We have a name for it “Seattle Freeze” and it’s real. Few would rise up to help their fellow man here.
The good news is that warmer, sunnier weatther with higher humidity is on its way to the northern temperate climates where the vast majority of the cases have been.
Updated results show the number of cases appears to be leveling off in Brazil, Vietnam, the Philippines, and India is also showing a slower rate of growth. These numbers indicate that the recent surge in cases in tropical countries is mainly a result of travelers bringing the disease with them from colder climates and not a sustained outbreak.
The number of cases exploded in a matter of a couple of months; it can disappear just as quickly–at least for a while.
UPDATE: The number of new cases in the US appeared to have peaked in April and they are heading downward. The trend is likely to be only temporary as result of the warmer weather; we need to assume that the virus will come back with a vengeance in the fall.
I suggest that a national strategy should be to follow the lead from South Korea and Japan, at least in areas with high population density. What have they done differently?
Greater use of face masks in public places.
Aggressive contact tracing and testing.
Selective restrictions rather than universal lockdowns.
They may also have had better luck with getting less dangerous COVID strains. US strains for the west coast may to be more like those in Korea and appear to be less dangerous, while New York has seen more aggressive strains from Europe.
Based on our experience here, it is clear that we need to develop better isolation for nursing homes similar facilities, which have been responsible for roughly half of the deaths. Sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes is ridiculously dangerous. The workers need to be isolated to prevent infecting residents.
We may have a few months to improve our response, but it unlikely that vaccine will be available in sufficient quantities to control the epidemic in time for fall weather.
