I don't get it, because these measures can't last forever. Let's pretend USA completely extreme isolates...step foot outside and you get arrested. Fine, the virus disappears in a month or two. Then what? Unless every single person on the globe does the same thing, you have to effectively keep your borders closed forever. This isn't a solvable problem at the state or national level, it's a completely global thing. We can attempt to slow it, but it's just gonna rear its ugly head again when we let our guard down.
These actions are for the ~5-10% of people who get this bug and who require intensive care in order to survive. The death rate is pretty low even for those who end up with severe symptoms if the full weight of modern medical technology and care can be applied to their recovery.
Right now, as I type this, many hospitals in the United States have had all of their excess intensive care capacity used up by Covid-19 cases. Not all, but many.
Once large groups of hospitals reach capacity, then there will be no choice but to black tag people who could otherwise be saved and leave them to die in the hallways.
You're right to note that this is a global problem. Given that, the vast majority of human to human contact is NOT cross border.
This bug is probably going to end up infecting most of the people in the United States. The main thing we can do at this point is to keep hospitals from being too overwhelmed, to keep the number of black tagged people, dying in the hallways, to a minimum.
> This bug is probably going to end up infecting most of the people in the United States.
Exactly. As you say, we need to flatten the curve to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, and we need to use the time to develop treatments to save the vulnerable when isolation eventually fails.
> Right now, as I type this, many hospitals in the United States have had all of their excess intensive care capacity used up by Covid-19 cases. Not all, but many.
Do you happen to have a source for this? I haven't heard much about hospital problems yet.
The measure's are to get a hold on the explosive number of cases. Once we get a grip on it, then you keep it contained with aggressive testing + targeted isolation.
You don't need to keep your borders closed forever. You can allow outbound flights without restrictions and make everyone on inbound flights go to a centralized quarantine facility for 2 or 3 weeks + test them.
What about cargo? Better yet illegal cargo we can't seem to get a grasp on. Or illegal border crossings? It only takes a single thing/person to kick off a chain reaction that gets us back to here.
Cargo isn't believed to be a significant transmission vector and has almost universally been excluded from border closures. If a country wants to be very cautious they can mandate that cargo sits in a warehouse for a few days, although that was almost always going to happen anyway.
Hey - owner of the model in question here. The idea here is to buy time; time to roll out testing (so only those that test positive need to isolate), prepare beds and ventilators, and develop therapeutics (vaccines are likely quite a bit farther off).
The frustrating challenge to this is how long symptoms take to appear. Isolation will stop the spread from the individual but only after the virus has been spread around quite a bit already. So, sure, much of what you said about localized preparedness will need to happen but we won’t be able to do the kinds of things we did with diseases like Ebola to limit its spread.
The goal is to delay and fit into the number of bed and the logistic stuff in hospital.
If a person get good care in hospital the rate of survival would be totally different.
For those country which had sudden high fatality rate was because their resources and supplies were exhausted - there were no bed, no consumable, even no protection for the nurses.
The non-forever outcome is a vaccine. Covid-19 becomes endemic, always around, restrained by a vaccinated herd. It becomes like measles, small outbreaks here and there when sufficiently many unvaccinated come in contact.
