The real issue here is that the economy was prematurely reopened before it was safe -- we have far more than enough money as a nation to have prevented this scenario from happening and chose a path of destruction out of sheer avarice instead.
The three places that I know of that have gotten cases to zero are China, New Zealand, and Australia, and they all used lockdowns that were far stricter than in the U.S.
The problem is that a soft lockdown doesn't bring R low enough to eradicate the virus quickly, and people won't stomach it dragging on for months. I also don't believe that it can be done on the honor system. There must be police writing tickets or worse for violations, or there is a segment of the population that will ignore whatever measures that are enacted. Unfortunately sometimes these are even identifiable groups of people that all socialize together in violation of health orders, so the virus will spread within these communities regardless of whatever the governor puts on a piece of paper and makes a speech about.
I live in Texas, but I'm sure I personally infected no fewer than 10,000-20,000 people last March, including the sorority that purportedly brought it back from Mexico during spring break. No doctor wanted to listen and no hospitals would test me even after I begged some of the best providers in the region. It wasn't until almost 9 months later that the mistake was acknowledged, and it's highly likely that community spread existed even in the US in November 2019 or even October 2019 just based on retrospective serology studies.
Places with poor hygiene controls like India have likely had far, far more infections than anyone even can imagine. That might be one of the first places to be immune.
to for example open more beds in preparation for the second wave (which was obvious to come). Instead hospitals were laying off people in the summer.
> Instead hospitals were laying off people in the summer.
Yup. One of the dark ironies of this whole mess has been that hospitals have been letting go of staff because they had to suspend (very profitable) elective surgeries to treat (not so profitable) covid patients. Think hip surgeries being postponed and bleeding hospitals dry as a result.
i think the 3-6 months that we had would have been enough to train any MD to care for a covid patient, at least for majority of cases and under supervision of existing high specialist. My understanding is that non-covid personnel had their workload significantly decreased, so they could have been trained for covid for the second wave.
My take is that L.A.'s issues have more to do with housing density, high number of people living with roommates and high number of multigenerational households. Also perhaps some some challenges communicating with an extremely large and diverse immigrant population.
I think it's quite clear to anyone who's been paying attention at this point that behavior has more to do with containment than anything else. The US and perhaps LA in particular for some reason or another is unwilling or unable to implement the same behavioral safety measures of other countries and cultures.
Mask wearing is the obvious one. If you go to any of those 4 cities I mentioned, 100% of individuals in public are masked, whether indoors or outdoors. 6ft social distance is very strictly followed with public shaming for those that take off their masks or do not follow social distancing guidelines in public.
Stopping between house and within house transmission is what I suspect those 4 cities you mentioned are doing. North America is more focused on stopping between house transmission.
Anecdotally, I know some cities in South Korea have quarantined people by placing them in an isolation room (4 people per room spread 6 feet out each wearing a mask 24/7) until they test as being COVID free. This was around 20-30 days from what I understand.
In Canada, if you quarantine, it’s 14 days in your own home. Mostly this is on the honor system. If you live in a condo / townhouse / strata or your neighbors know you’re quarantining, they can report you for violations. When quarantining, you’re restricted to a single room if you live with others, but there is still risk of passing it on to others. Anecdotally, I know of a case in Canada where an individual quarantining in their room has managed to pass COVID to 3 others who live in the house. These people were wearing masks around the house when not in their own room. If this original person was isolated in a hospital, the spread would stop at one. Since they weren’t, it ended up infecting the entire house.
With the number of now empty hotel rooms we have, this could easily have been provided on a voluntary/strongly encouraged basis. Instead what we got in SF for example was hotel rooms for the homeless (that hypothetically could have COVID) and no hotel rooms for people that actually tested positive for COVID.
https://twitter.com/koryodynasty/status/1345210393715564544?...
People should wear masks, but there's so much more they need to do as well.
I’m not saying NY was perfect; not by a long shot. But here it’s like people aren’t even trying.
Agreed. I see far too many people out without masks. It's scary.