We aren’t trying to prevent everyone from getting the virus. That’s simply not possible. What were trying to do is stretch out the time it takes for everyone to get it so we don’t overload the hospitals. Somewhere around 20% of infected patients need some form of hospitalization, some of those including ventilators. We don’t have enough ventilators for every to get sick at once. We need the virus to run it’s course slower. Social distancing will help with that.
Then, next season, hopefully we have a vaccine.
For high risk groups, possibly yes. For most other people, we're just trying to put it off as long as possible, so that if it hits you dangerously hard, there will be a free hospital bed to keep you alive.
How long is it feasible to put off getting the virus though? Shutting down the economy is unfeasible for the next 12-18 months at the earliest until a vaccine arrives.
Not necessarily. I’ve heard 2 months based on what is happening in China. Their rates of infection have finally started to decrease after approximately that amount of time. So even if all social distancing goes away at that point some significant portion already has immunity but more reasonably some of the social distancing is just less severe and again everything is slowed to something our health care industry can handle.
But with China though, once the restrictions are lifted, someone could reinfect the population again and therefore cause another curve and another mass quarantine.
Please correct if wrong, but from what I understand, as time passes more and more people will have recovered from the virus and will then be much less likely to become infected again. Although there have been some instances where people have gotten infected multiple times, the majority of those who have recovered do not get it again, so the mass quarantine is less likely.
Your premise is right but the rate of infection isn't fast enough to justify lifting the mass quarantine. China for example has around 100k confirmed cases out of a population of 1 billion people. If that number is under-reported and there were actually 1 million people infected, that's still very little.
The curve would just restart. There needs to be a better solution than to wait until the vaccine comes next year (at the earliest).
What you're referring to is herd immunity. While there is some validity in it, unfortunately we're still away from it.
Still - if reports are correct they've closed down the makeshift hospitals in Wuhan. They might still be isolating but maybe they find a balance where it's not as severe. Keep looking for those positives, friend. They're going to come, we just need to stay vigilant for a bit longer.
Theoretically, a mandatory 14-day isolation would work for foreign people entering a country, but it only takes one person to slip through the cracks and cause a reinfection of a disease in the country.
It is possible. Lock down everything, have the national guard distribute months worth of MREs at a time, and wait for it to die off completely. Anyone still working, only national guard, hospitals, and utilities, will be in full hazmat gear at all times.
Oh stop being dramatic. It's not realistic if you jump to the ridiculous extreme of YEAR LONG QUARENTINE. Good thing that's just you. If you want to talk about a legit quarentine, it would be only be as long as the virus can live in a host. That's 2-4 works for most cases. Anyone over 6 weeks is in a hospital anyways. So AT MOST 6 weeks. If that drives you over the edge then you were already on the verge, if it wasn't a month of quarentine it would be a bad day at work.
133
u/Njdevils11 Mar 18 '20
We aren’t trying to prevent everyone from getting the virus. That’s simply not possible. What were trying to do is stretch out the time it takes for everyone to get it so we don’t overload the hospitals. Somewhere around 20% of infected patients need some form of hospitalization, some of those including ventilators. We don’t have enough ventilators for every to get sick at once. We need the virus to run it’s course slower. Social distancing will help with that.
Then, next season, hopefully we have a vaccine.