Doesn't this put into question the whole premise that China had defeated the Covid-19 and things are beginning to come to normal?
The lockdown is in effect and the moment it's taken down, we'll see a second wave. No?
The lockdown is in effect and the moment it's taken down, we'll see a second wave. No?
That said, if the 5 days is true, then you wouldn't expect them to remove the lockdown until they know they've starved the virus for the incubation period (I think it's generally accepted that 14 days is the number, but that there are potentially longer outliers). By that logic, you wouldn't expect them to lift the lockdown materially for another 9 days and even then you would expect them to only gradually lift restrictions while they ensure no new cases emerge.
I'm sure there are media outlets saying China has "defeated" the virus, but from what I've read they've contained it, kept new infections to a minimum (attributing all at this point to imported cases) and are still on varying degrees of lockdown. And this is hardly reputable, but I follow people on Instagram who are in Shanghai and folks there still talk as if things are far from normal... There are still restrictions on what you can do, where you can go.
On the positive side, it shows that Wuhan now have enough testing capacity to test almost every single one who walked in a hospital even they are seeking medical help for completely different issues.
Who knows, I think they have no idea and are just keeping things as they are to avoid having Wuhan in the news. Would make awful press to admit to any new cases in Wuhan.
Are other major metropolises locked down similarly? Beijing, Shanghai?
In general, is it credible that China has had no new cases other than those so called "imported from outside"? Sounds like propaganda to me.
Kuala Lumpur has all unessential services and schools closed. Supermarkets are open.
People aren't allowed outside apart from going to work or the shops. Police are enforcing this and they've brought in the Army to help stop people spending time in parks.
Nanjing is a city of 8M people so roughly the size of Wuhan. I came away from it thinking that the numbers coming out of China could very well be credible given how strict movement/social distancing/etc is/has been. Of course that is not Wuhan, which is why the stricter lockdown still going on in Wuhan would seem to make sense (but I can't vouch for the authenticity of any of this).
Evidence from China and Italy is that they don't actually work. It's been three months, and China still can't let people leave their front door or the virus will return full force, with no expectations that another month or even another year of lockdown will help.
In Italy, with two weeks of lockdown, the exponential growth of new infections hasn't even slowed. Now they are predicting that "just three more weeks" and the exponential growth might start to slightly decline.
Wealth and freedom are declining around the world, but it doesn't even slow the virus' spread.
Meanwhile, places like Korea have no trouble stopping the virus without the authoritarianism.
And yet, all people here call for is ever-more economic destruction, and ever more authoritarian controls, all to no detectable effect. Except, of course, the end of our free and prosperous societies.
Don’t work for what purpose? They work well at shutting down the virus in the short term. In Wuhan the reproductive number of the virus is estimated to have dropped from above 3 to ~0.3 after the lockdown.
> In Italy, with two weeks of lockdown, the exponential growth of new infections hasn't even slowed
This is definitely not true. If you plot Italian cases or deaths on a logarithmic scale it’s easy to see the curve slowly bending down. Keep in mind it takes ~2 weeks for public health interventions to start showing up in data about identified cases, and ~3 weeks for them to show up in data about deaths.
> places like Korea have no trouble stopping the virus without the authoritarianism
Places like South Korea have had plenty of “trouble”, but have stopped transmission through nationwide testing, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine, along with early school closures and a mass social distancing effort among the public, pervasive use of face masks, etc.
The South Korean public health response (and we might add also Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) was much faster and more decisive than the response in the US or Europe. As a result they have avoided the situation of widespread community spread, and not needed to undertake a total societal shutdown as became necessary in Hubei or Italy.
What other countries should be learning from South Korea is to act quickly and stay on top of the virus before it gets out of control.
The common goal is to survive and to pursue the quest for happiness, I doubt it is better set by a central government.
As for the approach (the way to tackle the problem), having groups choosing various ways is a way to discover what works or not, and which new challenges are raised by each approach. When everybody everywhere applies the same approach, everything may break simultaneously if it is not the perfect approach (perfect approaches are pretty rare), and progress towards new solutions is slow.
You're responding to something else. The point I made is that you WANT to coerce people into vaccinating their kids, into educating their kids, etc, etc. Those should not be things where one crosses their fingers and hopes that people get convinced into doing that.
>The common goal is to survive and to pursue the quest for happiness, I doubt it is better set by a central government.
Sorry, are we even talking about the same thing here? I thought the conversation was about healthcare/vaccination/infectious diseases/.
>As for the approach (the way to tackle the problem), having groups choosing various ways is a way to discover what works or not, and which new challenges are raised by each approach. When everybody everywhere applies the same approach, everything may break simultaneously if it is not the perfect approach (perfect approaches are pretty rare), and progress towards new solutions is slow.
Okay, but nothing about having a central government precludes you from running local experiments w.r.t new policy. I believe RCT economics received a nobel prize either last year or the year before that.
My skepticism will wane when I see videos of hospitals all across the country with patients in the halls. Until than, we really have no clue what happens next.
There was no lockdown.
Everyone wears a mask in public places, this is mandatory. Before entering many/most buildings (private or public) your body temperature is measured. In most private compounds non-resident people cannot enter without a solid reason. Schools are closed. A gym I know was closed for weeks and restarted at the beginning of March in restricted mode (no group class, simultaneous private courses are under quota, masks are mandatory at all times...), and restrictions are progressively lifted (reduced group classes will soon restart...).
Until there is a vaccine or the entire remaining population develops some immunity, the disease is still around and lockdown will have to be lifted gradually to keep the number of new cases low enough that the cases that need intense care can get it.
If that doesn't work, restart the lockdown.
The big risk my be re-importing it back from other parts of the world who've been much less successful at containing this.
And current expert consensus is in line with that, putting the odds at 73% for a 2nd wave in the fall:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-expe...
R0 goes down with rising temps and humidity. Covid has a pretty high R0 to begin with, so unlike flu and colds that almost disappear in summer, covid will most likely be slightly less contagious than in winter (people being more outdoors helps too). That’s not enough to make it not spread in warm countries now, but it will likely help some bad areas in colder climates such as New York or Germany.
Japan still has a growth rate that's doubling roughly monthly. Better, and a much flattened curve, but still concerning.
But... hospital and testing capabilities are building day by day, the quarantine is buying time
It comes back, but the second time around we can isolate the right people due to ubiquitous testing, have more hospital beds and more knowledge on how to treat the sick, and are that much closer to a vaccine
[1] flattenthecurve.com