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Everyone seems to be laser-focused on getting over the current hump, holding fatalities down below a quarter-million, and "opening back up" the nation in May, June, or July, depending on your level of optimism. At that point, 97% of the population will still be susceptible. My question, and I can't find this addressed anywhere, is:
"After" social distancing ends, how will June-July be any different from March-April?
I see a few pathways forward. Some of them require strong leadership, some we are just likely to stumble into.
1. A miracle cure/vaccine/therapy becomes available by June and we all praise the FSM for delivering us from COVID-19. This seems the least likely, but let's all pray for it.
Death toll: Thousands. Instant economic recovery.
2. Everybody bears with it for the duration of the 1st lockdown and we obtain a few more masks, a few more tests, and a few more respirators in the current ad-hoc fashion through June. Some areas reduce or remove lockdowns. We try playing whack-a-mole with insufficient resources. The virus likely explodes again and we go through the whole lockdown cycle a second/third/fourth time, maybe with a few less deaths, until the a vaccine is completed or everyone has been infected.
Death toll: Maybe shy of a million in the end? Severe economic damage.
3. We fracture into partisan factions partway through the lockdown with the leadership flip-flopping between tightening lockdown restrictions, or just letting the virus run riot. A bend in the curve is declared victory and people drink the kool-aid or don't, depending on their politcal alignment and local government ordinances.
Death toll: Millions. Social, Political, and Economic crisis.
4. We start some sort of Pearl Harbor Pacific Fleet reconstruction project NOW. Billions of masks/gloves/ppe, hundreds of millions of test kits are manufactured and distributed/mandated to the general public. Before they are allowed to reopen, all gathering places must post Taiwan-style guards with temperatures scanners, hand sanitizer, and masks that people must wear before entering the school, bank, grocery store, etc. Massive temporary hiring of civil servants on a Political Campaign + Census-level scale. They test nearly EVERYONE. They call, text, email, post flyers, and physically track down every single person who came into contact with anyone who tests positive, test them, serve them notice to quarantine, and retest them again at the end of quarantine.
Death Toll: Sub-0.25M, Economic recovery minus the cost of the giant project. Surely it CAN'T be more than the 8 Trillion dollar stimulus/recovery/etc packages that we're already implementing!
So what is the plan? Are we just going to meander into 2 or 3? Does the government have a realistic long-term approach with which we can all agree to get on board?
This government can't plan its way out of a paper bag. But this is a description of what we SHOULD be planning on doing: The Hammer and the Dance. (The meat of the article begins about halfway down the page, at Part 4.)
It's difficult to plan far ahead when we're dependent on unpredictable scientific breakthroughs. Plus we can't count out getting multiple waves of this pandemic; we may start to go back to normal and then a second wave hits. I think we'll just have to be flexible and adapt as best we can.
It's difficult to plan far ahead when we're dependent on unpredictable scientific breakthroughs. Plus we can't count out getting multiple waves of this pandemic; we may start to go back to normal and then a second wave hits. I think we'll just have to be flexible and adapt as best we can.
Are we dependent on new tech, though? Other countries (Taiwan, Japan, Korea) beat this thing back with current scientific breakthroughs. We can maybe get to where they were, 3 months ago, with our current lockdown, and then we can do what they did. (Closed borders, temperature checks, masks, comprehensive testing/tracking.) I mean, I've heard talking heads mention these things as being what we should do after the first wave. I have yet to hear from a leader what we actually will do.
The doctors and scientists are telling us we won't have a cure for at least 18 months. Is the plan to do this shambolic lockdown dance for 18-24 months? Is hunkering down long-term and waiting for that really better than going to war with the technology we have?
I don't mean to pick you you, rjshae, but I really hope that's not the plan!
Don't you mean the 195 national governments have no long term plan?
No, I mean the US government has no plan - and appears incapable of making one. The Asian nations which are managing some level of control with this virus without imposing complete lockdowns had prior experience with SARS and learned from it. Because they acted right away, they never needed the drastic lockdowns that the US is experiencing now.
The good news is that IF (and it's a big if) we've learned from their management of this disease, when the current restrictions are lifted we ought to be at a low enough level of infection that we can, with sensible measures tailored to match the conditions in different regions of the country, ease out of our current lockdown without allowing the virus to run riot again. But that takes epidemiological monitoring and some advance planning. Alas, I'm not seeing much planning yet (at least not at the Federal level; the states may do a better job).
I don't get why most countries have a country-specific plan. This virus is global; that's why it's called a PANdemic. It's in almost every country now. The world needs a coordinated, unified, consistent response, not piecemeal by country. All it takes is ONE person traveling from country X (with slightly looser protocols) to country Y (with strict protocols) to start another local epidemic in country Y.
The world needs to place the WHO in charge of all this and let their national governments focus on non-health issues. WHO should be entrusted with the authority to tell countries what to do.
No plan really. Some will die, some will live, same as with the flu and some other diseases with similar mortality rates. Hopefully everybody else life won't be disrupted too much longer. Of course if a politician says this, it's suicide, but they understand and accept there will be a certain amount of loss. It's childlike to think otherwise.
No plan really. Some will die, some will live, same as with the flu and some other diseases with similar mortality rates. Hopefully everybody else life won't be disrupted too much longer. Of course if a politician says this, it's suicide, but they understand and accept there will be a certain amount of loss. It's childlike to think otherwise.
I guess I didn't include this option. So the current lockdown is just lip service/pretending to do something? Or we're going to do the open-closed dance intentionally so politicans can pretend they "did something" and don't lose in the next election? That's depressing.
They're winging it. And they're crappy improvisers.
What matters is 'winning' the next news cycle.
There are some very good people working on this dire matter. But there is no unifying leadership - that bunch is just playing Political Hunger Games and trying to figure out on who to pin the failure of not doing squat all January and all February and into March.
"The buck stops somewhere else!"
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Is There A Long-Term National COVID-19 Plan?
