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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020

Can this virus even be controlled? Or rather, beyond a point, does it even make sense to try - without dismantling our current economic structures completely?

As soon as you open international borders and ease lockdowns, regions and countries with few cases will see cases rise. We got to our current situation with just a handful of imported cases. Now that there are millions of carriers, you can't possibly hope to contain it with people traveling everywhere for work and leisure. Quarantining incoming travelers isn't feasible, at least not without sacrificing international business and leisure travel completely (a huge chunk of the GDP).

This is a siege where the castle only has food for two months. Unless you expect reinforcements (i.e. a vaccine or cure), extending the siege mostly means starving to death.

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I think the point is to find a point.

I.e. I was watching with some degree of unease how some of our official in Czech Republic seem to have had a bit of a power trip with closing the borders, e.t.c.

Fortunately that seems to be over, with restrictions on travel to bordering countries being slowly lifted.

Now it seems, that just wearing masks in shops and public transport should be enough? Accompanied with remoting where possible? I.e. there are no more spikes, and we have had preschools and pubs open for two weeks already.

Are the borders open? That's the litmus test - can the cases be controlled with no travel restrictions?

>Can this virus even be controlled?

Absolutely, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic have all succeeded in nearly wiping out the virus entirely. It absolutely is possible and giving up on wiping the virus out is disappointing, because it's been demonstrated to be possible.

Yes it does.

We are still flattening the curve and we (at least i do) wait for a vaccine.

Trying also means, for me, that all people able to do home office, do home office as long as possible to reduce the amount of people in public transport. It also means being more hygienic (we are pigs...), it also means staying away from elder people.

> Quarantining incoming travelers isn't feasible, at least not without sacrificing international business and leisure travel completely

You're not necessarily sacrificing international business and leisure travel, because there isn't going to be any if you've got a raging epidemic in your country.

Once you have the virus under control you can stop quarantining people coming from other countries with a similar or lower prevalence of the virus.

> Unless you expect reinforcements (i.e. a vaccine or cure)

But we do expect those. A vaccine is not guaranteed, but likely. A cure might be possible, but it's extremely likely that we'll get some effective treatments over the coming months. We already have some positive results.

> You're not necessarily sacrificing international business and leisure travel, because there isn't going to be any if you've got a raging epidemic in your country.

On some outdoors forums I participate in, people have expressed envy of those Swedish members who have been free to trek or cycle all these months. Now some of those foreigners are chomping at the bit to visit Sweden when borders reopen, because they want to experience that nature for themselves. There are enough younger people who are reasonably unconcerned with coronavirus to kickstart a tourism-based economy.

FWIW, I stayed at a hostel in a different city in my own country last weekend. It was already fully booked: as soon as the borders opened, young backpackers from the neighboring countries immediately started traveling again.

Whether an epidemic is considered "raging" or not comes down to media depictions. In countries where the media accurately portrays this illness as killing almost entirely people over the age of 70 with multiple comorbidities, younger travelers are going to move around.

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