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The question isn't whether lockdowns could work or how to make them work. We know lockdowns can work because China successfully pulled one off at the beginning

The question isn't whether lockdowns could work or how to make them work. We know lockdowns can work because China successfully pulled one off at the beginning of this debacle and people there were largely going about their normal lives after about 6 weeks. The question is really do politicians in the US have the balls to actually prosecute a successful lockdown in the Chinese style (no leaving the house more than X times per week and only to perform essential activities, checkpoints, non-voluntary temperature checks, forced quarantines, forced mask usage, arrests for non-compliance, shutdown of every non-essential business, etc). The answer to that is a resounding no.

JacksonGariety 6y ago
> The question is really do politicians in the US have the balls... Exactly. Authoritarianism works really well during a pandemic. But it isn't the American "way," so we're stuck with coronavirus.
cameldrv 6y ago
What China managed to learn in Wuhan within a matter of weeks was that even a tight lockdown wasn't enough. R was still hovering around 1. Most of the transmission was happening inside homes. The solution was to to implement a central quarantine. If you tested positive, you were not sent home, you were sent to a quarantine facility to get better. This reduced R to about 0.3, and they were able to eradicate the virus in Wuhan. There have been fits and starts for this using empty hotel rooms, but nothing universal. In San Francisco, they offer hotel rooms to the homeless under the idea that they are more likely to catch the virus on the street, but they offer nothing to people who are actually confirmed to be infected. Those people go home and spread it to their family/roommates.
fma 6y ago
Even if we don't go extreme to a lockdown, a mandatory mask policy would be more helpful than the situation we are in now.

JacksonGariety 6y ago

> The question is really do politicians in the US have the balls... Exactly. Authoritarianism works really well during a pandemic. But it isn't the American "way," so we're stuck with coronavirus.

cameldrv 6y ago

What China managed to learn in Wuhan within a matter of weeks was that even a tight lockdown wasn't enough. R was still hovering around 1. Most of the transmission was happening inside homes. The solution was to to implement a central quarantine. If you tested positive, you were not sent home, you were sent to a quarantine facility to get better. This reduced R to about 0.3, and they were able to eradicate the virus in Wuhan. There have been fits and starts for this using empty hotel rooms, but nothing universal. In San Francisco, they offer hotel rooms to the homeless under the idea that they are more likely to catch the virus on the street, but they offer nothing to people who are actually confirmed to be infected. Those people go home and spread it to their family/roommates.

fma 6y ago

Even if we don't go extreme to a lockdown, a mandatory mask policy would be more helpful than the situation we are in now.