As I understand it, that is what most countries do and achieve with various success. And as soon as there is any respite in the load of the hospitals, people are already pushing for a easing of restrictions in place.
But with all that, Giesecke's approach is more like getting the whole thing over with quickly, which would have brutal effect on the health care system, to say the least. IE, once this is done, all the doctors and nurses in the emergency care system are going to quit.
The point of lockdowns wasn't to stay locked until total control. That simply will not happen in the US, at this point. (And I'm not sure it's feasible anywhere other than South Korea, now.)
The point was to give everybody time to react and get ready. It's been almost 45 days since the lockdowns started--healthcare workers should have all the gowns, wipes, masks, etc. that they need, by now.
The fact that they don't is an indictment of most of the governments of most of the countries.
In my opinion, we stay locked down until healthcare workers have what they need even if a gigantic wave hits. If enough healthcare workers die, we're all in deep shit even after Covid-19 reaches herd immunity.
Want to unlock things? Start smacking some idiot leaders around about giving equipment to healthcare workers.
When I see healthcare workers saying "Please, stop, we have all the equipment we need and then some," then I'll believe we can come out of a lockdown.
Most countries are seeing death rates beginning to decrease after weeks of lockdown.
There were four new cases today. One confirmed by test and three presumptive cases which according to the experts probably have it. Plus there are hundreds of people in isolation/quarantine who are still sick. I wouldn't declare "elimination" just yet.
Even if new cases dwindled down to zero, that doesn't imply elimination either. There might be many asymptomatic people who are not spreading it currently because of the lockdown, but who will start spreading it once they start interacting with people outside of their bubble.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/415278/covid-19-new-zeal...
Do you think that's practical? This virus has a hospitalisation rate of somewhere between 10% and 20% and an ICU rate of 4-10%, and people who are hospitalised need to be in there for 2-4 weeks. If a 'gigantic wave' is even 10% of your population (which realistically it would far exceed, given how contagious the virus is) you need 10-20 free hospital beds per 1000 population of which 4-10 are ICU beds.
The United States has 800k hospital beds of which ~100k are ICU beds, for a population of 330 million (source: https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals) That's 2.4 hospital beds per 1000 population, of which 0.3 are ICU beds.
You're gonna need at least 10x as many additional beds as you currently have. At least. And that's for only 10% of your population getting sick.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying that lockdowns are pointless. I'm saying that they need to be longer and more thorough to get to the point where the virus is entirely eliminated, or they need to remain at current levels indefinitely until an effective vaccine or other treatment is available.
Part of the reason there is even a debate is because we don't know this for sure.
The few studies where a large population was tested and shown to be widely infected but largely asymptomatic seem to fall into one of two camps: They used immunological tests (which are now under serious suspicion don't seem reliable) or they tested a newly infected population after the first cases were found (before the majority of infections had time to manifest symptoms.) They've also been reported misleadingly (eg. the aircraft carrier case where it was reported "80% of the crew were infected but asymptomatic" when actually 80% of the crew who tested positive were asymptomatic.)
The number of hospital and ICU beds are being increased rapidly. Medical students are now allowed to work with patients until the crisis passes ( thus increasing the healthcare capacity).
After carefuly observation the plan is to slowly reduce the stringent lock down measures and increase the infection rate, while keeping the medical staff sane.
We will get the next update in the first week of may, whether the first step of "easing" worked as intended.
What we are going to see is a new normal, even if we find a working vaccination soon.
It isn't quite so bad. Lockdowns are a continuum of measures, and you can modulate them over time. We're having to do such strict lockdowns because we were so slow in responding. Once the R is below 1 you can release measures to keep it at that threshold and modulate it over time to match your health care capacity. Merkel seems particularly well informed about this, having even explained what the curve of healthcare capacity versus R looks like for Germany.
This was a good discussion on this at the beginning of the lockdowns:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
The problem is that even if we just fill the current beds we have, we STILL don't have enough equipment for the healthcare workers.
This is a major problem.
Especially so since we can substitute therapies. For example, apparently high-flow ventilation is just as good as invasive ventilation--and maybe better. The problem is that it aerosolizes the virus, so your workers need a lot more equipment.
If you don't have enough equipment for the healthcare workers, things fall apart long before you reach available system capacity.
I defy you to find a specific "point" of lock down. I more or less support it but I'd still claim there's not been a proactive strategy in the US even if occasionally the US uses rhetoric. So for that reason, there's no specific "point". Maybe authorities will reach sufficient clarity that they can articulate and stick to a point but not now.
But otherwise, yeah, the entire situation is a mess, an indictment of all the state involved, etc.
Cool. Any resources to read up on that? To my knowledge only a few countries have very few cases. But eliminated completely? Wow. I'd like to dive into this topic.
Unless they believe that's sustainable for 18 months, their whole strategy of eradication wouldn't be feasible, so one would have to assume this is the plan.
Asked whether New Zealand had eliminated COVID-19, Ardern replied: "currently."
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
Wait are we saying that Giesecke is arguing for an (even) more relaxed approach than is currently happening?
I assumed he was arguing for the status quo in Sweden, because hospitals are effectively at capacity now, and have been stable there for a while. A significant increase in new infections would be pretty bad so I don't think he's arguing for "business as usual".
If I understand him correctly then what he's saying is that it's not good to minimize the number of infected, but rather one should only ensure hospitals aren't overwhelmed. A good outcome is if hospitals are never overwhelmed and a significant portion (enough to make a difference) have immunity. A poor outcome would be one where either people die from lack of available care or one where the outbreak is contained through means that aren't sustainable until a vaccine is available.
Obviously if there are long term effects on the health care system from the situation where hospitals are not overwhelmed but just overworked so they quit or are burned out (e.g. many countries won't be able to give healthcare workers summer holiday this year) then that needs to be taken into account as well of course.