My biggest concern is that we aren't working on the infrastructure and cultural shift that is going to be needed to have a return to normal.
The endgame of covid-19 is herd immunity, which requires either 30-60% of the population infected and recovered, or it requires a vaccine. Realistically both are probably 9+ months out: vaccines are slow to develop, and almost every governor has proven they'd rather shut down everything than see hospitals be overloaded.
In other words, for the next 6-12 months we have two choices:
(a) Public life sees a boom-bust pattern of sickness, where we open things back up, then a new outbreak of infection happens, and everything shuts down again for 2-6 weeks.
(b) We aggressively fight off our initial outbreak, then build infrastructure to quickly identify and contain all infections. We gently reopen life back to a kind-of-normal states of permanent semi-quarantine until a vaccine arrives.
In my opinion, (b) is clearly the optimal approach. And yet we haven't even begun working on the infrastructural and cultural changes needed to support pre-herd-immunity public life.
We need mass production of face masks and a culture where it is unacceptable to not wear a face mask in public, particularly crowded locations and public transit.
We need every building, every bus and train, every tourist attraction, testing every visitor with a contactless thermometer. If you have a fever you get a covid-19 test.
To support allowing non-remote-capable work to resume, any jobs that are remote capable should remain remote until we have herd immunity. More people leaving their homes means higher risk of an outbreak, and when an outbreak happens non-remote-capable employees are the ones screwed over.
As much as I distrust the CCP and China's official numbers, it just takes one glance on the measures being taken in China to prove that China is a thousand times more serious about containing this virus than we are, and that's going to play in their favor in getting things back to normal. Here's an eye-opening video on some of the steps Nanjing has taken to prevent an outbreak:
Cultural changes? How would you build those? The government doesn't control the culture. How would you make it unacceptable? Bureaucrats don't have direct control over that. Also, a bunch of "we need"s about the ideal situation don't do much.
The reason the China contained it is because she is an authoritarian state. While that provides certain advantages in this situation, it comes with certain drawbacks: not being able to access many websites, inability to express your political opinion, inability to own a firearm, being tossed in a concentration camp if the government doesn't like you. This isn't a question of leadership, you're asking the government to do things it literally has no power to do, things entirely outside of the constitution.
> Cultural changes? How would you build those? The government doesn't control the culture. How would you make it unacceptable? Bureaucrats don't have direct control over that. Also, a bunch of "we need"s about the ideal situation don't do much.
We have a federal government. A federal government can spend money, including on marketing. Remember WWII propaganda, some of which people can still recite to this day, like "loose lips sink ships"?
A federal government can pass laws that require workplaces to take certain actions (temperature checks for employees, WFH for jobs that are capable of doing so). A federal government can pass regulations requiring public gatherings to take certain security actions such as taking visitors' temperatures with a contactless thermometer. A federal government can spend money to have factories produce a very large number of face masks and contactless thermometers, and can coordinate with states to distribute them to population centers.
> The reason the China contained it is because she is an authoritarian state
Yes, thanks for stating the obvious. If you notice I didn't suggest we restrict travel between states and cities, or that we lock people inside their homes, or that we should register every location that a person goes to so that we can quickly identify who they've been in contact with should they test positive for covid-19. These are the more authoritarian actions that China has taken.
In fact, lacking the authoritarian actions, we need to try even harder at the non-authoritarian stuff. Which we aren't doing.
The endgame of covid-19 is herd immunity, which requires either 30-60% of the population infected and recovered, or it requires a vaccine. Realistically both are probably 9+ months out: vaccines are slow to develop, and almost every governor has proven they'd rather shut down everything than see hospitals be overloaded.
In other words, for the next 6-12 months we have two choices:
(a) Public life sees a boom-bust pattern of sickness, where we open things back up, then a new outbreak of infection happens, and everything shuts down again for 2-6 weeks.
(b) We aggressively fight off our initial outbreak, then build infrastructure to quickly identify and contain all infections. We gently reopen life back to a kind-of-normal states of permanent semi-quarantine until a vaccine arrives.
In my opinion, (b) is clearly the optimal approach. And yet we haven't even begun working on the infrastructural and cultural changes needed to support pre-herd-immunity public life.
We need mass production of face masks and a culture where it is unacceptable to not wear a face mask in public, particularly crowded locations and public transit.
We need every building, every bus and train, every tourist attraction, testing every visitor with a contactless thermometer. If you have a fever you get a covid-19 test.
To support allowing non-remote-capable work to resume, any jobs that are remote capable should remain remote until we have herd immunity. More people leaving their homes means higher risk of an outbreak, and when an outbreak happens non-remote-capable employees are the ones screwed over.
As much as I distrust the CCP and China's official numbers, it just takes one glance on the measures being taken in China to prove that China is a thousand times more serious about containing this virus than we are, and that's going to play in their favor in getting things back to normal. Here's an eye-opening video on some of the steps Nanjing has taken to prevent an outbreak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be
The simple fact is we're lacking the national leadership to make an effective response to this disease.