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> a little extra short-term sacrifice can get us near eradication inside two months. "Near eradication" is not enough if you want to "snuff it out". COVID-19 s

> a little extra short-term sacrifice can get us near eradication inside two months. "Near eradication" is not enough if you want to "snuff it out". COVID-19 started with only a couple of cases. There was a patient zero. So no, "a little extra short-term sacrifice" would not be enough, because you are very unlikely to catch everything, especially worldwide. Health workers would inevitably catch it by treating patients, and you can't just tell the entire world to stay home for 3 weeks. Even if you could snap your fingers and do that and have everyone obey, we don't have the infrastructure to provide worldwide basic needs, for free, for everyone, in an automated way; billions would die. Mitigation until vaccine is the only sensible way we know of at this time. Gradual lockdowns to help contain the virus for cities and countries that don't have the testing infrastructure available to seriously prevent spread. We're lucky that this is treated in days/weeks (rather than months/years), and that we have already found a promising treatment (hydroxychloroquine). It'll help the mitigation phase a lot. Edit: To address "If we adopt a stance that makes R0 < 1, there is no other stochastically possible outcome.": This is untrue if you're time-bounding this to "before we make a generally-available vaccine".

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
Oh, I don't think near eradication is an acceptable goal either. We need to actually eradicate it. I specified near eradication because we have proof by example that it is possible. As yet, nobody has actually eradicated the virus in their borders, so I don't want to presume it is possible. However, it needs to be the goal. > To address "If we adopt a stance that makes R0 < 1, there is no other stochastically possible outcome.": This is untrue if you're time-bounding this to "before we make a generally-available vaccine". Depends on what we get the value to. If we get it to 0.5 or below, as it appears China has done, then probably before we get the vaccine ready. But sure if it's at 0.95 then we will have to wait for the vaccine.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  I think everyone would agree with you. The question is how long that realistically takes, in a minimally-damaging way. I don't think there's a world in which there's a better option than "waiting for the vaccine with various forms of mitigation". Boy would I love to be proven wrong.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    At this point it's hard to imagine doing much more damage to the economy than what is already being done, at least not in any way that would be useful for stopping the spread of the virus. We should take any further actions that seem likely to curtail the spread (massive testing, massively expanded surveillance and data publishing about the virus, centralized quarantines if needed to engender compliance). And then I guess we can see. If China has not managed to stamp it out in the next month or so, that will be a pretty bad sign for our ability to do. > Boy would I love to be proven wrong. I would love you to be proven wrong. And I'd accept being proven wrong, with deep regret. But it's definitely possible to get within striking distance. I hope we can see China jump the gap from few to no new cases soon. That would give me hope for the rest of us.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago

Oh, I don't think near eradication is an acceptable goal either. We need to actually eradicate it. I specified near eradication because we have proof by example that it is possible. As yet, nobody has actually eradicated the virus in their borders, so I don't want to presume it is possible. However, it needs to be the goal. > To address "If we adopt a stance that makes R0 < 1, there is no other stochastically possible outcome.": This is untrue if you're time-bounding this to "before we make a generally-available vaccine". Depends on what we get the value to. If we get it to 0.5 or below, as it appears China has done, then probably before we get the vaccine ready. But sure if it's at 0.95 then we will have to wait for the vaccine.

scrollaway 7y ago
I think everyone would agree with you. The question is how long that realistically takes, in a minimally-damaging way. I don't think there's a world in which there's a better option than "waiting for the vaccine with various forms of mitigation". Boy would I love to be proven wrong.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  At this point it's hard to imagine doing much more damage to the economy than what is already being done, at least not in any way that would be useful for stopping the spread of the virus. We should take any further actions that seem likely to curtail the spread (massive testing, massively expanded surveillance and data publishing about the virus, centralized quarantines if needed to engender compliance). And then I guess we can see. If China has not managed to stamp it out in the next month or so, that will be a pretty bad sign for our ability to do. > Boy would I love to be proven wrong. I would love you to be proven wrong. And I'd accept being proven wrong, with deep regret. But it's definitely possible to get within striking distance. I hope we can see China jump the gap from few to no new cases soon. That would give me hope for the rest of us.