Seeing as China's condition seems to be improving, instead of having cases just keep burning indefinitely, I doubt that's the case.
They aren't done with the virus, but the worst seems to be past. Whereas if it could easily re-infect then I would expect the case numbers to strictly increase.
If we assume this will become endemic and a vaccine is a ways off, it would seem like the best approach is to flatten the curve just under the healthcare system capacity and get it to "pass through" most of society quickly (i.e. everyone who is at lower risk gets infected and quarantines until viral shedding stops).
Doing this would allow us to return the economy back to normal as quickly as possible and prevent all the fallout from an indefinitely stopped economy. Once most people have had it, we'll essentially end up in a state of herd immunity and it becomes statistically less likely than other health concerns at-risk populations had before COVID-19 was even a thing.
Meanwhile China, being on lockdown the entire time is still susceptible to having it become a pandemic within their own population as soon as they lift the lockdown and try to return to normal because they citizens haven't had the opportunity to develop antibodies as broadly.
A U-shaped recovery would be bad for a lot of people, especially if prolonged. Last thing we want is an L-shaped market with no real recovery.
This was an interesting point from a Guardian article where he defends the plan:
“If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time,” he said. The government is concerned that if not enough people catch the virus now, it will re-emerge in the winter, when the NHS is already overstretched. [0]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-sc...
The condition can ONLY improve in terms of new cases, not deaths, 1) if there is a vaccine, 2) 40-50% people get infected and develop immunity, or 3) people start living in bubbles, including masks and gloves and stay away from each other, that there spread is controlled.
We know 1 and 2 have not happened. So either China is still in lockdown and this lockdown is how the life will be till there is a vaccine, or the data is not correct.
With that even at 1% 6-8 million would have died. Even with filtered data, it is doubtful that they would have been able to hide so many dead.
A few weeks ago we didn’t even know there were asymptomatic carriers. My prediction is that when all is said and done and the IFR is closer to 0.01% that this will all look very stupid.
Experts in Ohio say they suspect that 1% of people are infected. OK, so where are the hospital cases?
You cannot have 100,000 cases with even a 1% hospitalization rate without at least... on the order of 250 hospitalizations.
That number assumes a homogeneous distribution. As deaths are observed mostly in the elderly and China's demographics tapers off rapidly beyond 60yo, the incidence would be far lower than 1% of the total population.
https://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/china-...
That is a very good point. I think you're right, focusing on R0 is the right thing and that might just be the key since estimated R0 was ~1.x-3.x, so perhaps masks, gloves and some common sense can indeed bring it down to <1.