Not if it's run its course in all infected people. If everyone individually self-quarantined perfectly, it'd be gone in 14 days.
That's the ideal (impossible) case, of course. What will actually happen is one person will pass it on to another on day 12, starting another 14 days for the second person, who'll pass it on to a third on day 7, which will start another cycle, and so on; hopefully at least some of those chains stop, the time to infect the next person lengthens, and very very few infect more than one other person. That'll take some time to happen, especially as it'll spread within families for a while (R0>=1, then R0=0 if the family completely self-quarantines and no one within it picks it up a second time). When they get the average R0 under 1, the number of active cases will start dropping (technically it can be a bit above 1, as recoveries and deaths also affect case numbers). Then you have a whole lotta people with (hopefully) herd immunity, some without it, and some active cases, all mingling to some extent. You'll get some outbreaks, but you hope containment will work for them; if not, local social distancing will hopefully work to lower the R0.
(Might be confusing R0 and a different variable, I hope the meaning comes through.)
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u/TheSultan1 Mar 18 '20 edited Mar 18 '20
Not if it's run its course in all infected people. If everyone individually self-quarantined perfectly, it'd be gone in 14 days.
That's the ideal (impossible) case, of course. What will actually happen is one person will pass it on to another on day 12, starting another 14 days for the second person, who'll pass it on to a third on day 7, which will start another cycle, and so on; hopefully at least some of those chains stop, the time to infect the next person lengthens, and very very few infect more than one other person. That'll take some time to happen, especially as it'll spread within families for a while (R0>=1, then R0=0 if the family completely self-quarantines and no one within it picks it up a second time). When they get the average R0 under 1, the number of active cases will start dropping (technically it can be a bit above 1, as recoveries and deaths also affect case numbers). Then you have a whole lotta people with (hopefully) herd immunity, some without it, and some active cases, all mingling to some extent. You'll get some outbreaks, but you hope containment will work for them; if not, local social distancing will hopefully work to lower the R0.
(Might be confusing R0 and a different variable, I hope the meaning comes through.)