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It seems like these actions taken by governments will ultimately be futile, so the question is: can a vaccine or effective antiviral be developed fast enough to
by lend000 7y ago
It seems like these actions taken by governments will ultimately be futile, so the question is: can a vaccine or effective antiviral be developed fast enough to be worth the ~2-4 months of "slow spread" that can be bought in exchange for the economic and social slowdowns a country will sustain by creating massive quarantines like this?
While an authoritarian government may be better suited to positively addressing some very specific problems (such as a pandemic), I do not personally consider the benefits to be worth the costs of infringing on everyone's freedoms. A government built around liberty and individual rights simply cannot enforce a sufficiently useful quarantine here to contain something approximately as infectious as the flu.
Even China, which has severely curbed the spread of the coronavirus at tremendous expense, is still dealing with an exponential decay of new cases, at best. At the current rate (and assuming no incoming infections from abroad), it could take China a full year to go 14 days with no new cases. And if they let up restrictions sooner than that, perhaps they will lose ground to the virus once more. It does not seem sustainable.
Also note that most cases are not being tested and reported. Anecdotally, I have second degree connections who are mildly infected and being responsible (although still probably exposing some people who live near them), but see no point of getting tested because they don't need the hospital and it's just an extra trip out in public. Other seemingly sick people are out and about in the city in which I live, coughing without covering their mouths in busy areas, etc. Perhaps I am just noticing it more, but I suspect the official case numbers are still off by a factor of 10 or more, so considering roughly a million people are likely infected throughout the world, containment is a fantasy at this point.
- caconym_ 7y agoAssuming that survival grants some level of immunity, if you can flatten the curve of the epidemic, you can make a limited supply of hospital beds, supplies, and personnel go a lot further.
- lend000 7y agoThis is a good point, and I think it is reasonable to start with the immunity assumption, since it is generally the case for respiratory viruses. Still, I wonder what the math looks like. It has indeed been shown that flu outbreaks in ideal conditions are more intense, but conversely, the flu seasons are shorter [0]. If medical attention makes a significant difference in patient outcome, then the longer virus season is presumably preferable. However, the significance of medical attention needs to somehow be weighed against the total number of people who end up being infected and the costs of shutting down pieces of the global economy for longer periods of time (not to mention limiting individual rights.) Consider that less vulnerable people may be more likely to become infected in their daily lives since they are more active and likely come into contact with more people. In this case, a faster outbreak with many mild cases may actually result in faster herd immunity, and therefore fewer total infections in vulnerable populations. Perhaps a partial quarantine of at-risk populations is the best solution. [0] https://www.citylab.com/environment/2018/10/big-cities-have-longer-flu-seasons-while-small-cities-have-more-intense-ones/572161/ https://www.citylab.com/environment/2018/10/big-cities-have-...
- riquito 7y agoIt's all about to slow it down so that hospitals are not overwhelmed, nobody hope to block the contagion from spreading
- Veedrac 7y agoSlow spread also means fewer people infected in the long run, and that fewer infected die.
- ajross 7y ago> It seems like these actions taken by governments will ultimately be futile Why do you say this is futile? Quarantines work. They're just very expensive.
- lend000 7y agoIf you look at highly infectious diseases that were effectively eradicated, most either ran their course and infected hundreds of millions (Spanish flu, swine flu), or were eradicated with both quarantine and vaccination (Smallpox, rinderpest). I would be very interested if you could find an example of a highly contagious disease that was stopped without a cure or vaccine [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...
- ajross 7y agoYou're measuring the wrong thing. Quarantine isn't an attempt to "eradicate" this disease. Like you say, it's likely to become a pandemic and infect hundreds of millions or more. You quarantine to halt the rate of infection and give your health care facilities time to care for the seriously infected. And that saves lives. A lot. It can save a lot of lives.
- lend000 7y agoThat's the conventional wisdom, but as I mentioned in another comment on this thread, I'm not convinced that's the case, especially with a contagion that is most dangerous to less active people.
- ajross 7y agoThen with all due respect, you really need to cite someone expert on the subject. Seriously public health policy folks are universally recommending social isolation (of which quarantine is the most expensive variant), and it has worked. Who exactly leads you to believe that this isn't working? This is a poor time for armchair analysis when we're looking at worst case scenarios involving millions of deaths.