>> We can’t really afford that for long, but it buys time to prepare and may be required if things start to fall apart.
AFAIK Wuhan and South Korea are both at the tail end of their their infection trajectory and they are still not back to normal working situations/environments. I'm still not sure if this will be a short, blunted infection with all the quarantines taking place, or something we have yet to see the top side of.
Either way, this is going to crater a ton of small/medium sized businesses. All of the gains the market made in the last few years has been completely erased by this virus.
> Two and a half month of draconian quarantine may work
That will probably be insufficient in duration:
”We [...] show that policy strategies which aim to mitigate the epidemic might halve deaths and reduce peak healthcare demand by two-thirds, but that this will not be enough to prevent health systems being overwhelmed. More intensive, and socially disruptive interventions will therefore be required to suppress transmission to low levels. It is likely such measures – most notably, large scale social distancing – will need to be in place for many months, perhaps until a vaccine becomes available.”
Wuhan is on track for zero new cases by the end of this month after starting the quarantine on January 23. So, in no way is the collapse of their heath system part of a total quarantine. But, I am saying what happens after that? Do you shut everything down on the next case, when infections it 100 or 10,000 etc.
Basically the quarantine option has a known outcome in the short term, and doing nothing as millions die is another option. But, they have such high costs and are so far apart a middle ground seems desirable.
AFAIK Wuhan and South Korea are both at the tail end of their their infection trajectory and they are still not back to normal working situations/environments. I'm still not sure if this will be a short, blunted infection with all the quarantines taking place, or something we have yet to see the top side of.
Either way, this is going to crater a ton of small/medium sized businesses. All of the gains the market made in the last few years has been completely erased by this virus.