So what are you going to do when the virus is gone in your city/state/country, isolate yourself from the rest of the world? Because the timeline/situation will be different for many other places.
I think it may be a good harbinger of the public's willingness to endure repeated, long-term changes to their behavior. The way I see this going, we're going to get lockdowns in most countries within the next week or so. After 6 weeks or so, new cases will be negligible, and we'll declare victory and pick up our lives. The virus will silently spread from a few undetected cases during the summer, but then take off again around October, when we get a second wave. Assuming it hasn't mutated to become significantly less deadly (pretty likely - see sibling threads), that will be the real killer, because instead of starting from 1 index case in 1 city it'll be seeded from tens of thousands of sleeper cases across the globe. Public opinion won't support a second lockdown then - people will just be left to die with their families.
Is there somewhere to check that score, or is it a higher karma feature?
We strongly react to strong threats. It's in the viruses interest to become a weaker threat like the common cold so we tolerate it instead of actively fighting it.
With the 1918 flu pandemic, mild cases of flu remained with their unit, while extremely sick cases were transported home via train for improved medical care. As a result, it was the severe cases that ended up sparking new infections, while the mild cases died out after generating herd immunity within an army company.
Most respiratory viruses follow the first scenario, although there is a caution there for people who suggest eg. transporting sick people by airliner to regions with fewer cases to make better use of available hospital capacity. Ironically asymptomatic transmission is your best friend here: if all transmission is asymptomatic, the strains that get transmitted will be the ones more likely to not cause symptoms.
Covid is a bit different, because it has a longer incubation time, but that wasn't the issue with the 1918 influenza outbreak.
(Note well: I am not an epidemiologist.)
It wouldn't be crazy to ask international travelers to pay the marginal cost of extra testing and/or the negative externality of spreading the virus between worse and better controlled regions.
2) invest into medical research
3) hope you can manufacture something effective by the time the next wave hits
Anyway, if R0 can be brought below 1, it wouldn't need to be indefinite. The further below 1 it is, the faster the virus will extinguish itself. This was seen in China, where they went from exponential growth to fewer new cases each day and ultimately to the situation now where most new cases are imported from other countries.
You also don't need global coordination, although it helps. Any individual country can restrict outside travel from outbreak areas, get their own R0 below 1 via social distancing to eliminate the local outbreak, and then relax social distancing locally, relying on travel restrictions and temporary quarantines of travelers from outbreak areas, plus testing and contact tracing. If cases start to flare up again, increased social distancing measures can be brought in to get them back under control.
So in theory you could do extreme distancing for a period on the order of a few months, and then normalize somewhat. It would take a global response of that sort (unlikely), a vaccine, or a change in the virus itself though to end the situation entirely.
Re is effective spread rate, taking into account natural immunity, vaccination, contact tracing, etc. By definition, if Re>1 the epidemic is growing exponentially and if less it is shrinking.
Yes, that or have 2-4% of the infected population die...