
Americans are underestimating how long disruptions will last, health experts say - hhs
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/03/americans-are-underestimating-how-long-coronavirus-disruptions-will-last-health-experts-say/
======
CydeWeys
Many Americans are underestimating how disruptive a mass uncontrolled pandemic
is going to be to their lives. If hospitals are completely overflowing and
most people who get serious symptoms die for lack of available treatment
capacity, and everyone knows friends and family members who've already died
form it, do you think life isn't going to be massively disrupted anyway?
People will hunker down and go nowhere out of a sheer sense of self-
preservation, without the government needing to tell them to.

The pandemic itself is what's causing all the disruption and economic
hardship. The social distancing measures are NOT the cause -- in the absence
of them we'd be doing even worse off in the long run.

~~~
ok1234567890
Hospitals are not overflowing. We have 6,100 hospitals,989,000 hospital beds
available. And my best friend is a Registered Nurse (California) and says they
are not even close to capacity. She also stated what is presented on the news
is 100% a lie.

~~~
ihaveafriend
Okay. I also have a friend. He is 35yo and has COVID and his blood oxygen
saturation is at 80%. The UCLA hospitals refuse to admit him. They’re already
over capacity.

~~~
nradov
No hospital in the US is currently turning away patients who have acute
hypoxemia. If your friend's blood oxygen is actually 80% then he is at
immediate risk of death. Call an ambulance right now.

------
donatj
I've been telling my wife and friends I expect this to last well over a year.
I've been told I "sound like an idiot" and that my negativity isn't helping.
We'll see.

~~~
zabana
Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease after a
60day lockdown so it shouldn't take more than that. Unless of course there's
an agenda we're not aware of.

~~~
tathougies
This is a lie. China now has another outbreak, and several country's
intelligence agencies have suggested that their original numbers were
completely made up.

~~~
zabana
Would you mind providing proof ?

~~~
tathougies
Here is a good overview:
[https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783](https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783)

Proof:

1\. China's numbers simply do not match models that take all their measures
into account.

2\. China only tested syptomatic people, and did not classify pneumonia
sufferers as COVID: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
china-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-
asymptomatic/china-to-focus-on-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases-as-public-fears-
grow-idUSKBN21I0VC)

3\. Wuhan crematoriums are seeing way more deaths than reported:
[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-
crematorium...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematoriums-
are-filling-thousands-of-urns-with-coronavirus-remains-each-day)
[http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-
ash...](http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ashes-of-
coronavirus-dead-cast-doubts-on-numbers-49673.html)

China's new outbreak: [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-
wave-covi...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave-
covid-19-outbreak-200402143711728.html)

------
wtvanhest
It is just as likely that health experts are overestimating how long Americans
can stop the economy. This happened so fast that most people really could not
even wrap their head around the changes. I would love for us to keep working
from home, reduce travel, and get this thing under control, but at least up
until now, I have a salary, and am not being adversely impacted.

The number of Americans being adversely impacted is in excess of 10 million
today, likely closer to 20 million, and pretty soon almost everyone is going
to share some level of pain.

This is going to be a very tumultuous 2 years.

------
slg
I am reminded of the factoid about how airlines will often announce a extended
delay by first announcing a shorter delay and then continuing to push it back
several times. That is supposedly done to increase moral. Apparently several
smaller disappointments are easier for people to process, accept, and forgive
rather than one large disappointment. I wonder if this is the government's
approach, because no one looking at the facts of the situation could have
believed resuming things by Easter or anytime in the next few weeks was
likely.

------
EarthIsHome
It doesn't help that many of our leaders have tried to sweep the potential
impacts of this under the rug.

We're constantly lied to. It's not the fault of the people in America. It's
the fault of those in charge.

~~~
lostcolony
It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office.

~~~
ardy42
> It's the fault of the American people for voting these morons into office.

Eh, not so much. Americans are forced to express their complex ideas and
preferences through a system that consists of a handful of essentially binary
choices. And most voters probably don't even strongly approve of _any_ of the
choices they're given.

~~~
lostcolony
Speaking as an American, I'm aware. But the morons wrt this particular
crisis...are universally from one of those two choices. You can certainly find
fault with the other choice, but they don't nearly have the "ignore facts,
ignore what anyone other than I tell you, ignore even the evidence of your own
eyes" message.

~~~
ardy42
I totally hear you, but elections aren't just about selecting leaders with
competence and honesty. They're also about expressing preferences on moral
issues, too. A lot of voters are willing to set aside the former and vote on
the latter, because in their minds, they aren't given the choice to do both. I
also think that lack of choice has a really corrosive effect on voters who
find themselves in that situation.

~~~
lostcolony
Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to
actually learn it.

~~~
ardy42
> Then this will be an interesting moral lesson for them. If they choose to
> actually learn it.

For them, _and us_. Our agency contributes to this problem as well as theirs.

~~~
lostcolony
And us? What is this lesson teaching us that we didn't already know?

Yes, we have to deal with the consequences of their idiocy. I fail to see how
our agency, given we aren't voting for these clowns, is contributing to the
problem.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Bluntly, your "us or them", your (or at least your candidate's) "they're a
basket of deplorables"... yeah, you're contributing to the problem.

What this _should_ be teaching you is to not write off people that you don't
agree with. They're still human beings. They're still Americans. You think
they're wrong, and that's fine, but regarding them with contempt does _not_
make it easier to persuade them to agree with you.

You may say that the contempt originated with them. You may be right. But be
better than them, not just like them.

------
dkarl
I guess on an emotional level it makes sense for people to believe that if we
do a good job of social distancing, we will be rewarded by finishing it
sooner. That's usually how hard things work. But according to my
understanding, there is no such thing as a local end to the coronavirus. Even
if some locality (city, region, country) implements such effective measures
that the virus stops spreading there, they will still be vulnerable to
outbreaks so long as they have enough unexposed, non-immune people to sustain
person-to-person spread. Unless you hermetically seal your borders a la Plague
Inc., the way for a community to go back to normal life is for a critical
percentage of people to be exposed so we get herd immunity _under the
conditions of normal life_.

In short: It's flattening the curve, not shrinking the area under the curve.
The better we do it, the longer it will take.

P.S. Since this is inevitably political: in my personal experience the
misconception that "the better we do it the sooner we can stop" is being
spread by liberal/lefty people who are in favor of strict social distancing
for as long as it takes. I think they're trying to rally enthusiasm for
compliance, but the fact that this optimistic spin coincides with the
political rhetoric from certain conservative ideologues should give them
pause. Some politicians are anticipating and subtly fomenting a loss of
patience with social distancing, and anything that raises unrealistic
expectations plays right into their hands.

~~~
traitsnspecs
I wonder how many people will die from the economic impact of a prolonged
shutdown. I wonder how many lonely older folks will wish they were dead now
that they can no longer receive the few visitors they had.

I'd be willing to bet it's more than the actual numbers affected by a virus
and an overburdened hospital system.

~~~
departure
Older folks? I have a mid 30's coworker who used to get most of social
activity from the office and tech events and meetups (which is bad for a whole
other set of reasons) but even from our fairly active work and friend group
chats and you can tell he's really feeling the loneliness and depression.

He started drinking more during the week and has mentioned several times that
he is very sad and can't wait for this to be all over. I know that there are
thousands of people in the exact same scenario.

~~~
restalis
I come to observe suffering in people on the other end of the spectrum - the
social butterflies that are like caged wild animals nowadays. Calling
acquintances left and right was ok for the first two weeks or so, but as the
quality of the discussed subjects dwindled and with it the frequency of social
virtual interactions, there's a clear sign that the self-isolation feels more
harsh for extroverted people.

~~~
hkai
Our company instituted a smart policy that only management need come to the
office because they tend to be extroverts unlike the ordinary developers

------
hprotagonist
I expect/aspire/hope to get to about 80% normal by October or so.

At this point I hope to but do not expect to be able to make my normal
Christmastime holiday travel, and that's about my horizon.

~~~
alleyshack
What do you think 80% normal will look like? I'm currently planning a small
(30-50 people) event in October and I'm trying to figure out if I need to
postpone/reschedule.

~~~
blihp
I'd just assume it needs to be rescheduled into 2021. Should group gatherings
resume before the end of the year, which seems unlikely, it seems a safe bet
that turnout would be rather low just due to people not wanting to risk it. On
top of that, we're most likely going to be neck-deep in a pretty painful
recession (at least) by then.

------
ve55
Part of this is due to many institutions, companies, governments, etc, just
closing 'for the next month or so'. Then after a few weeks, they extend it
another month, and so on.

It seems like many expect the pandemic to just magically disappear when you do
a very low-effort quarantine and sit back and relax for a bit.

Remember, this entire pandemic started from one person being infected. As long
as there exists one person with this virus, it can start back up and easily
scale to millions of cases all over again. Victory is not easy, and some of
the main reasons we are doing quarantine are to learn a lot more about
treatments, cures, how to cope with these changes to our supply chain, and
many other things; that is, to buy us time. The levels of quarantine most
countries are doing obviously slow the spread down, but are not sufficient
enough to completely stop it. This is a long-term event and will be with us
for a long time.

------
chrismeller
I think the real question here is whether or not the disruption will continue?

If things continue as they are for months, there’s simply going to be a change
in mindset and we’re going to realize that there is a new “normal”. Full
protective gear for a normal workday could easily become the norm.

Maybe they underestimate how long “this” will continue, because they expect
“this” will drastically change normal life.

~~~
glitcher
Wow, just imagining how much more waste we would generate if all of human
population needed PPE every time we left our homes as the new normal.

~~~
chrismeller
Ironically, that could also be a huge boost to some real recycling programs,
and not just with protective gear.

Once people are focused on recycling something they use every single day and
there are easy mechanisms to do that, recycling other things becomes less of
an issue.

------
fiftyfifty
The article doesn't say we are all going to be shut in for he next 12-18
months, it just says life is going to be different for a while. Once the
number of cases is dropped down to a manageable level again, which for many
states in the US is projected to be somewhere from the end of April to the end
of June, we can open things up a bit provided we have a strategy for extensive
testing, following exposures and isolating people that test positive. Yes that
will still be significantly different than our previous lives, but for many
people it will be much closer to how things were before. The key is we need to
continue to ramp up testing and we need a system in place for authorities to
randomly test healthy people so that they can monitor the extent of the
outbreak before it turns into hundreds or thousands of deaths a day again. So
the average person will be able to go to work, socialize and more or less
return to life as normal but they may have to submit to a nasal swab once in a
while on the way into the grocery store or something like that. It doesn't
seem like a terrible trade-off.

------
dmartinez
Serious question: how long does it take for humans to permanently adjust their
sense of normalcy? There is a concept of `creeping normality`[0] that gets at
this, but there isn't a lot of discussion about how to speed it up and make it
permanent.

We know from South Korea that public mask-wearing is probably the most
effective form of dropping the R0 quickly. If somehow 100% of Americans could
get access to face shields (via 3d printing, for example), then the
engineering and logistic problem is solved.

But the bigger problem is the social one. How do you socialize the acceptable
use of masks or face shields in everyday public life? If enough people feel
enough distress, I could see every person wearing masks, forever. If that
happened, the talking points about this dragging on or immediately rebounding
start to change.

Given enough technical choices in lifestyle design, there has to be some
optimal solution that minimizes droplet emission while maximizing freedom of
movement.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality)

------
treis
I think health experts are over estimating how long Americans are willing to
have their lives disrupted.

~~~
ivankolev
Lives will be disrupted either way, lifting restrictions too early will result
in more deaths, which is the ultimate disruption of life.

~~~
fourmyle
Like guns the virus is much more of a problem in urban places than rural
places. Americans not in cities aren’t going to take much more of this
shutdown imo.

~~~
danharaj
This is misguided. The capacity of the healthcare system in rural areas will
be even easier to overwhelm.

~~~
gnulinux
Of course it's misguided. Which country handled this crisis worse than US?
Misguided is an understatement.

~~~
fourmyle
Our death rate per capita is substantially lower than China and Italy for
example.

~~~
danharaj
Y'all need to understand what an exponential function looks like.

~~~
fourmyle
Y’all need to not compare absolute case numbers on an exponential curve
between countries with vastly different populations.

------
dbish
What do others think the right timeline to plan for is, and is there anything
different people should be doing if it's going to be another 6 months or
longer? Personally, I'm assuming this will last until at least September.
Better to be pleasantly surprised if it's earlier.

~~~
Rapzid
We've only got a few months in the tank economically and flattening the curve
alone will keep us on lock-down for years.

They aren't talking too much about it but the plan is almost certainly to buy
time to transition to a new strategy. The keys to this IMO will be squashing
new cases, those 15 minute tests(billions of them), a health enforcement
agency of some sort to conduct tracing and targeted quarantines, and
increasing the capacity of the health system.

The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an
impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level.

~~~
intopieces
>The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an
impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level.

I hope when all is said and done, people take their state governments more
seriously. The federal government is just not equipped to handle this kind of
issue. I've been impressed with California's level of response.

------
013a
I think there's a shard of truth in the assertion that: if you ask an
epidemiologist how long people should remain locked in their homes, they'd
tell you "forever". If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open
today". Neither of these answers are realistic solutions to this problem.

Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately,
false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to
be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will
do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's
a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than
sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life.

At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless.
They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal.
There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government
do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please
stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better
therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its
course without as many economically disruptive mitigations?

Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are
useful. Its constantly evolving.

~~~
vfc1
The economic restrictions can be lifted in a just couple of months since the
curve is under control, but people will have to go to work wearing face masks
while the pandemic runs its course through 2021.

~~~
013a
I think, and hope, that this is the best case solution, and its what we
pursue. As long as people take the core of the "social distancing" measures to
heart, and practice them every day, we can control the spread without Stay-at-
Home. Wash hands. Sanitize high-touch surfaces every few minutes. Wear a mask,
maybe even gloves. If you feel sick, stay home.

If we are diligent, we can "have our cake and eat it too". But we have to be
diligent.

------
bpodgursky
The problem is that public health officials are completely misusing
terminology and sending contradictory messages, and it is 100% not the fault
of Americans misunderstanding it (this is from the same article!):

> Public health experts have said the near-term goal is to flatten the
> epidemic curve of new cases

vs

> “We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical
> director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
> “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down
> with a hammer and get to near zero cases.

Getting near zero cases is not flattening the curve -- that's suppression!
Flattening the curve is an assumption that everyone will eventually get the
disease, and trying to not overload the health system. THAT is what Americans
have gotten onboard for, and what a 2-4 week lockdown would set us up to do
(give us time to expand hospital capacity, etc)

But if on the other hand, past the propaganda, the public health plan is
ACTUALLY to eliminate the disease entirely, that's a completely different
plan, and it will take months or years. It's not the fault of Americans for
not understanding the implications, when they are being actively lied to about
what the plan IS.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Yeah. The more I learn, the more confident I am that nobody has a real plan,
and it's just a fiesta of acronyms and agencies who are only pseudo-educated
(e.g. couldn't recite essential statistics about mortality rate once one a
ventilator off the top of their head) on the topic.

It's hard to say though, how much of it is raw political ignorance versus
hiding bad news.

~~~
ardy42
> Yeah. The more I learn, the more confident I am that nobody has a real plan,
> and it's just a fiesta of acronyms and agencies who are only pseudo-educated

I disagree. No one _at the top_ has a real plan (probably including the
political appointees at the agencies), but I'm pretty sure those agencies
could put together a better one with leadership that would let them do it.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/jared-kushner-
cor...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/jared-kushner-
coronavirus.html)

------
ck2
Once there is a cheap and high reliability antibody test widely available,
there are going to become two classes.

Those who move freely about and do what they want, and those that live in fear
of the others because they can still get infected and don't know who is who.

Imagine a dystopian near future where you have to carry a government approved
ID showing your immunities to get into establishments or to even move about
the country.

~~~
CydeWeys
This is the world I'm already living in. I got coronavirus in mid-March and
have since recovered from it. Now I'm walking about with impunity. I still try
to maintain social distancing to keep others at ease, but I'm not worried when
people violate it.

If only there were restaurants for me to go to ...

(And yes, I'm eagerly awaiting the blood antibody test because I want to know
for sure; my symptoms were pretty textbook coronavirus, but not serious to
warrant hospitalization, and hence no test was available for me.)

~~~
ck2
mid-March? Be aware that while some studies say you still virus-shed for two
weeks after, some say as long as five weeks it can still be detected.

Just because your fever broke doesn't mean the virus is gone, just means your
body is fighting it and "winning".

~~~
CydeWeys
I strictly self-quarantined for the recommended 14 days, plus 3 days following
the end of symptoms.

I doubt many people are going to be down for the ~7 weeks of strict quarantine
you're suggesting.

------
generalpass
Whenever I read these health experts, I get the impression they feel the
economy is just some superfluous activity to keep the masses engaged.

~~~
Hokusai
> I get the impression they feel the economy is just some superfluous activity
> to keep the masses engaged.

I understand your frustration, but, remember how news talk about computers and
how much simplification is needed to get the overall public to understand the
concepts.

Do not judge experts from the two liners that you read in the news. Stimulus
packages, social distancing, new ways of producing needed equipment...
everything is part of solving the problem.

~~~
generalpass
> I understand your frustration, but, remember how news talk about computers
> and how much simplification is needed to get the overall public to
> understand the concepts.

> Do not judge experts from the two liners that you read in the news. Stimulus
> packages, social distancing, new ways of producing needed equipment...
> everything is part of solving the problem.

The article I'm commenting on, which I also read prior to commenting, is not
what you are describing.

From the article:

> Those resources do not current exist, said Konyndyk, who also noted that
> hospital capacity across the country needs to be expanded and protective
> equipment for health workers restocked. There are currently global
> shortages.

> “If we want to be able to — as I think we need to — turn our economy back on
> in a safe way, we need to be able to do that sort of thing at scale,”
> Konyndyk said. “And we do not have anywhere close to the public health
> infrastructure that’s needed to pull that off.”

His statement suggests that he thinks the economy operates as a switch that is
simply turned off and on at a whim, while also saying there do not exist
enough resources to perform the needed tasks. Where does he presume these
resources to come from? Printed money?

Also from the article:

> “We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical
> director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
> “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down
> with a hammer and get to near zero cases.

If they truly have nothing but the best intentions for keeping society
healthy, they would understand that economics are more complex and more
powerful than anyone can command or comprehend. If they keep the economy shut
down all the way until there are "zero cases", there will be a lack of basic
health care as resources rapidly dwindle.

I also think they are terrible at grasping stats. I have yet to see published
average random sampling of the population. Undergrad stats for nearly every
major teaches you don't have to sample very many people to estimate a
population. And there doesn't seem to be any attempt to analyze overall
mortality rates, which should at least on a monthly basis be up over past
years.

------
jackcosgrove
Sweden is the country to watch as they are the policy outlier.

It appears that their infection, hospitalization, and death rates are not
higher than other countries which implemented lockdowns.

It also appears that their economic activity has declined by a similar amount
as did that of countries which implemented lockdowns.

So if staying at home is made voluntary, the economy won't reflate all of a
sudden, and illness and mortality probably won't increase. Because even if
staying at home is voluntary, many people will still stay at home, including
potential patrons of reopened businesses.

We'll see how things progress in the months ahead, but our course seems set
regardless of policy.

~~~
nhebb
I don't understand why Sweden is being held up as a paragon. Their death rate
is currently 9th worst worldwide and over 2x that of the United States':

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-
deat...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-death-rates-
worldwide/)

Edit: Both are good replies. Thank you.

~~~
username90
Sweden stopped testing people who don't get hospitalized about 3 weeks ago.
Before that their death rate was extremely low, on par with Germany.

> However, that strategy has now changed. Authorities have shifted their focus
> away from testing all possible cases, and instead on protecting the most
> vulnerable groups. People with severe respiratory symptoms or who belong to
> a risk group will still be tested.

[https://www.thelocal.se/20200320/fact-check-has-sweden-
stopp...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200320/fact-check-has-sweden-stopped-
testing-people-for-the-coronavirus)

------
carapace
We can and should reframe the economic disruption as an opportunity to build a
new and more humane economy, even _before_ the virus is brought under control.

We should be able to flatten the curve _and_ tackle our economic issues at the
same time: the resources required are orthogonal while the benefits are
synergistic.

------
raincom
Folks in the developing countries don't have any safety net(no $1200 IRS
check; no unemployment tax; etc). Most of them are day laborers or small scale
business people selling food on the street side. If this will continue, many
in the developed world, esp in cities, will struggle for food.

------
xtiansimon
Something wrong with this website statnews.com--

At least for me using Safari browser. I was auto-redirected something like 40+
times to upgrade my Norton Anti-virus, to install Flash, and one or two other
fracking things.

------
NopeNotToday
Looks like HN killed this post. It's no longer showing on the homepage

------
kian
The number of people who die, on average, per day in the US (as of 2015) was
roughly 7,500. We're less than 5 doubling periods from those being our daily
numbers - i.e., for the death rate in the US to be doubled. At 3-5 days per
doubling, that's less than a month away. Every day after that, until we either
burn through 80% of the population or invent and distribute a vaccine, is
going to be something we are unprepared for in our history as a nation.
Approximately 8 doubling periods from then, or about two months away, and if
we haven't gotten this under control, more people will die in one day than
will die all year in a normal year. At least then, we will pretty much have
hit the upper end of the curve, and at that point may well gain herd immunity.
I give it about 4 more weeks until we consider hell to have officially broken
loose. I expect human behavior to be less predictable at that point - or
perhaps all too predictable...

------
twblalock
I'd like to see an economist stand on the podium next to the president and Dr.
Fauci and talk about the other side of the trade-off the government has
decided to make.

------
MiguelVieira
Even if the current US shutdowns are effective, no more than 5 or 10 percent
of the population will have gained immunity. We'll be nowhere near what's
required for herd immunity.

The shutdowns will at best give us a "do over", a second chance. The only way
to end the shutdowns and not have cases explode again will be to replace them
with a smarter strategy: wide-scale testing, fast contact tracing, antibody
tests, mask-wearing, temperature checks, social distancing. The federal and
state governments need to be planning this now. The virus has an R0 over 3 and
getting it below 1 will not be easy.

This all disappears if we find a vaccine or therapy, but hoping for that is
not a plan.

------
hkai
The 2008 crisis brought us extra half million cancer deaths, according to a
study in Lancet. That's only cancer! It doesn't include poverty, other
disease, less funds for charities, suicides and other forms of misery.

It seems we are setting ourselves up for countless millions deaths globally if
we continue with the lockdown.

------
udfalkso
The key to this is better testing and positive interventions. Right now we are
just flattening the curve, but there are a couple things that could help speed
up a return to normal life long before a vaccine:

1) Widespread, accurate testing: For example, if we could test everyone in a
few minutes before they enter a workplace or home that could go a long way to
enabling many activities to restart.

2) Improvements to treatment: If some relatively safe malaria drug or other
intervention can reduce the severity of the disease such that treatment
requires days instead of weeks and/or doesn't require ventilators/ICU this
would be a huge boon. Less people would die, most importantly, but also the
healthcare system would be able to handle many more cases, further reducing
the need for extreme social disruption like we are doing now.

I'm personally optimistic that at least some material progress will be made on
both fronts in the near future. A planet full of very smart people is working
on this.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Can you blame them? This is the US, we have no safety net for non-corporate
persons. If people don't convince themselves the disruption will end sooner
than later then they may as well start looting because we're going to die
starving and cold in the streets.

------
mc32
Locales that had the pandemic under control are seeing new flare-ups.

So either we lock down till a drug treatment is authorized (there are
promising candidates), a vaccine is found or we accept that it’s unstoppable
short of the above and we go about knowing the risks but while minimizing the
known risks.

------
ipunchghosts
My guess we will be out of quarantine by memorial day.

------
toohotatopic
>Though vaccine development is proceeding at a historic pace, in a best-case
scenario a product won’t be available for the general public for at least 18
months, and likely longer.

Without a vaccine, the limiting factor are ICU beds. If 1% of sick people need
an ICU bed, then the number of infections has to be limited to 100 times the
number of ICU beds.

Now, if people need 30 days to heal, and you have 100,000 ICU beds, that means
you can treat 1,200,000 people per year and let 120,000,000 people be
infected. There are 300 million people in the USA, so it takes roughly 2 years
to reach something like herd immunity.

------
devit
If done properly (i.e. everyone except law enforcement, medical, utility and
delivery workers stays home, with military/police enforcement, then everyone
who did not stay home is tested multiple times) eradication is possible in a
month.

Unfortunately we found out that almost the whole world, with some possible
exceptions, has leadership that is either incompetent or has other incentives,
so we will probably have to wait for a vaccine for a full return to normal
life.

~~~
tathougies
> Unfortunately we found out that almost the whole world, with some possible
> exceptions, has leadership that is either incompetent or has other
> incentives, so we will probably have to wait for a vaccine for a full return
> to normal life.

'Normal life' includes hundreds of thousands people dying of infectious
disease each year that nobody notices. I give it about 4 more weeks before we
return to the normal way of acting and about 4 months until this is no longer
a major news story so we can all forget about those who have died.

Not saying it's right, just my observations on how people behave.

~~~
Hokusai
> 'Normal life' includes hundreds of thousands people dying of infectious
> disease each year that nobody notices.

I really think that people notices when a loved one dies, whatever the cause.

What makes you think that normal people just shrugs off the death of a loved
one?

I am old enough to remember how many people used to die in traffic accidents
and how much money, effort, and regulations where put in place to lower that
numbers.

I am happily impressed by how much people, from doctors to retail clerks, are
doing their part and how governments have moved the economy to support that in
need.

Your divisive message is out of place and does not help.

~~~
tathougies
> I really think that people notices when a loved one dies, whatever the
> cause.

Oh I agree, but hundreds of thousands die from infectious disease every year,
and while their family mourns (and ought to of course), life goes on.

> Your divisive message is out of place and does not help.

I simply said what I thought would happen, not what I think is right.

> I am happily impressed by how much people, from doctors to retail clerks,
> are doing their part and how governments have moved the economy to support
> that in need.

All governments worldwide have actually and intentionally neglected to help
people suffering from depression, mental health, and suicidal thoughts, which
are almost certainly also going to lead to more deaths quite soon. I give it a
few weeks before suicide numbers come out and indicate these lockdowns as a
direct cause. Again, I'm indifferent to whether or not these sanctions are
warranted, but I'm just pointing out what I think will happen.

------
known
Americans will prevail due to their uncanny ability to adapt to
adverse/diverse conditions

~~~
cultus
What makes Americans in particular so much more special than other humans?
This kind of American exceptionalism is ridiculous and should have been put to
bed decades ago.

------
phnofive
The effectiveness of the propaganda has been astounding - of course they are
underestimating it, they were convinced that masks didn’t work to avoid
wasting them, just as they were convinced that a 15 day window would flatten
the curve.

~~~
lostcolony
Who is 'they'?

And, no one thought masks didn't work; the guidance was "don't buy the masks
that work because health professionals need them, and you can achieve the
desired effect by keeping distance".

Now there is some thought that maybe, MAYBE the virus can stay airborne longer
than thought (no proof of that; we have yet to see any infectious agent
actually do that, even in a lab), and that maybe, MAYBE a non-medical mask can
help a bit if that's the case, so sure, why the hell not, wear a mask, but not
a medical grade one, please, we need those for our doctors and nurses.

~~~
new2628
There were actually several high profile experts around the world (WHO, US
Surgeon General, most European authorities, even children's programmes) that
said without any qualification:

"Don't wear a mask, there is no need to wear mask if you are not sick, in fact
it may even be harmful and may create a false sense of safety.".

This was a harmful and factually false message that caused and will cause
unnecessarily deaths and those who propagated it should be held accountable.

see e.g.
[https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12447444277357813...](https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1244744427735781377)

~~~
lostcolony
Even that statement you know was qualified, since I'm assuming you aren't
implying it was to practicing medical personnel.

"There is no need" \- there still isn't. There are zero instances, even in a
lab, where we've seen the virus aerosolize. If you keep your distance, all
indications are you should be fine.

The only thing that has changed (and remember, this is advice based on facts,
and so as new facts are uncovered, the advice can change too; that's called
"science", and is different than "propaganda", which is what I was directly
responding to) is that we have seen some cases we can't explain...and so the
guidance has become "just in case, sure, why not...just please not the medical
ones because we need those for people who have to get within 6 feet of sick
people".

~~~
new2628
I disagree that for the general public there is no need to wear masks. If you
go to a supermarket and someone sneezes/coughs at you, even a scarf around the
nose gives _some_ protection. Less than perfect, but more than nothing. A
proper mask would give more protection. The fact that there are not enough
masks is a different issue, but it doesn't mean they are not needed.

I don't need any evidence or data for this and I don't need to have a theory
of aerosoles to understand this, as it is common sense, and there is zero
downside to do it, so it is a no-brainer.

But if I still needed data, I could look at which countries have the most
widespread mask-wearing among the general public: Japan, SK, Taiwan, China,
HK, Singapore. Basically, all the countries that managed to contain the
epidemic with reasonable success. When the top Chinese epidemics/virology
expert was asked in an interview what Europe and US are doing wrong, he said
if he had to mention one thing, it would be lack of masks.

