Was preventing the spread of covid throughout the population possible once China failed to contain the virus? Can you name one country that managed to do that? Even China eventually gave up.
> Was preventing the spread of covid throughout the population possible once China failed to contain the virus?
It's not about preventing the spread, but about controlling the rate so that hospitals don't / didn't get overwhelmed.
One of the early countries to get hit was Italy, and the army had to be called in to help with the logistics of taking away the body bags / coffins. A year after the pandemic started there were still refrigeration trucks outside of some morgues because of capacity issues:
Everyone on the planet will eventually probably get COVID, but as long as it's not at the same time, there are chances for treatment for those more heavily effected (some folks are fortunate enough that it's no worse than the flu; others suffer for months (e.g., Physics Girl)).
Yeah I was responding the comment that said it was possible to prevent the spread, not control the rate which most countries did to varying degrees of success.
Yes, it was possible, but like all collective action problems it involves people organizing for the general good at a cost to themselves.
Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading.
But it's not going to happen because a significant fraction of the population: 1) don't care (either from the get go or after a period of time), 2) think spreading the disease is a positive ('builds immunity'), or 3) make 'statistical decisions' that fail at points.
Edit to add: I hope the downvotes are because I forgot to add the "for two months" to paragraph two. This could all have been over and done with between April and June of 2020 (or maybe a few months later to give time to ramp up mask production). Oh well, at least big Pharma made big bucks.
> Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading.
This is delusional. China did far more than this and still was not able to control Covid. And even in a fantasy world where you could actually stop all human-to-human contagion, many respiratory viruses have animal reservoirs, making the entire exercise pointless.
It's comforting to think that it's all just a collective action problem and if people could be a little more self-sacrificing, we could make it go away, but it's simply not the case.
China is not the whole world, and had to deal with the risk of COVID entering the country from other places. Notably, they did bring COVID numbers down to a very low level, albeit temporarily.
> And even in a fantasy world where you could actually stop all human-to-human contagion, many respiratory viruses have animal reservoirs, making the entire exercise pointless.
None of this contradicts GPs claim that it would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses. Quite a few (common) respiratory diseases don't have animal reservoirs and would be effectively eliminated.
And I didn't mention the problem of people who can't afford to take precautions, which is why this is a collective action problem.
And sure, SARS-CoV-2 did end up in animal reservoirs, but nipped early enough in the bud this either wouldn't have happened, or would have been controllable (with respect to animal-to-human transmission).
China was one of many Asian countries that prevented the spread until they had widespread vaccination available. Now thanks to a culture of filial piety and a particularly stubborn set of boomer elderly, China failed to achieve anywhere close to universal vaccination / boosting of its most vulnerable, but that wasn't due to failure to stop the spread.
