We did the shutdown experiment. It caused harm in my opinion.
My stance is that government mandated lockdowns do more harm then good. They aren’t a blunt tool, they are a bomb that misses its target.
What I am not for, is blanket lockdowns, government choosing what’s essential and what’s not essential. We panicked in March. Let’s not repeat the same mistakes in August.
We did the shutdowns wrong.
They are definitely a blunt instrument. They're not meant to be a final solution. Using them as a final solution to prevent spread is using them wrong, and they'll never work for that.
A shutdown is supposed to be a temporary short duration blunt instrument used to stop the uncontrolled spread of an infectious disease in a broad group by disrupting all contacts in that group. It's goal is to slow the spread long enough to implement more targeted controls. It's very good at that. It doesn't take any knowledge about how transmission works or who is contagious. It's goal is simply to stop as much interaction as possible to reset the clock so that more permanent solutions can be implemented. As such, it also disrupts everything else that requires interaction to work.
We did wrong.
We neither mitigated all of the other damages caused by the shutdown at a sufficient level nor did we use the time to implement better solutions to contain the disease. We allowed the damage, and did some half way attempts at slowing, not containing.
As such, we're probably going to need another one at some point in some areas. It's the only way to reset the clock once the infections is widespread enough. Let's hope we do it better the second time. Doing it will still not be a permanent solution, only a way to buy time and stop an out of control spread. It's possible the efforts done to slow the spread will mitigate this, but at some tipping point the slowing is still not enough.
When the case numbers are low, testing and contact tracing can prevent large scale community spread.
This is the solution. It's the only solution to containment instead of just slowing spread. We must be able to test people fast enough between "test need identified" and "result returned, contact trace if positive". Something on the order of 24 to 48 hours at maximum. Based on today, there's only 2 ways to get here. Either increase testing capacity that all test are available and returned fast enough OR reduce current levels so that existing test capacity can deliver results fast enough.
Build/Deploy more fast testing capacity or shutdown enough to disrupt the spread to small enough level to allow fast testing and tracing and do the fast testing an tracing as part of ending the shutdown.
I so wish some news organization would break down the testing numbers to "tests returned within 24/48 hours of need" vs "test results today from who knows when in the past". That first group is critical. The second group is practically noise, mostly useless for containment, and just wasting resources. Those longer test times do provide statistical knowledge about the spread, they just don't help contain it.
We don’t believe in contact tracing in this country.
Somehow, we manage it just fine for other things like TB exposure.
It doesn’t stop people from refusing to cooperate. I’ve seen numerous stories of people refusing to talk to the department of health or refusing to give the names of people they were in contact with. People are dug in.
I don't get this. "You've exposed people you presumably like to a highly contagious disease tell us their names and contact details so we can have them get tested to see if they're infected and spreading it to others". And people don't want to help their friends, or are associating with people they're embarrassed to be associated with. These are the same people who would hide being bitten by a zombie, bite others, and then get them to hide it too.
It’s not an easy call. The biggest question is what do you do when kids get sick? Unless you want the plan to be just let everyone keep going to school even if they are sick there has to be some kind of other plan. When a kid gets sick that kid must quarantine but do you quarantine all the kids in that class too? Do you get them all tested before they can come back? That seems to be the plan most places. That can be pretty disruptive to education too especially when test results take days or weeks to come back.
This one is simple. You need low community spread and fast test and trace. When a kid/teacher/administrator/cafeteria worker gets sick, trace all the contacts with enough exposure, quarantine for 2 days while testing, and repeat for positives. Throw in some extra random school sampling everyday (testing not quarantine) to look for a hidden asymptomatic spread or early identification.
If we cannot do those things, and the test and trace cycle is to long to be effective, we've only slowed the spread but haven't moved at all to containment. While I hate it, there's no reason to open schools if we're only slowing and not making any containment progress. It's like adding wood to a fire we're trying to put out. Sure, if we add wood slower, the fire will not get as big as fast, but it's still getting bigger and not going out.
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