Today’s headlines are that this is expected to run through 2020 and into 2021. Apart from the mayhem in the health system and the many millions of deaths, that would probably cause a widespread economic collapse, so I can see they want to avoid that. Once it spreads to much more than say 1% of the population, almost everybody will get it unless they live in some isolated place.
Herd immunity is not an option, with a disease which kills so many while spreading so effectively.
Peter wrote:
Once it spreads to much more than say 1% of the population, almost everybody will get it unless they live in some isolated place.Herd immunity is not an option, with a disease which kills so many while spreading so effectively.
It will eventually spread to around 60 to 70% of the population, the virologists can predict that with pretty good accuracy (unless we shut down more or less everything right now). If we manage to contain most of the risk groups in the 30 to 40 % who won’t contract the virus in its first wave, then here immunity will indeed be not only “an option” but “the solution” until a vaccine is deployed.
The question is how long immunity lasts after you got infected. That is still unclear but probably won’t last longer than a few years at most. This will become a recurrent disease like Influenza…
Both the effectiveness of a vaccine and “herd immunity” are based on the assumption that the virus does not mutate as fast as say, influenza, and that the immune system retains enough of a “memory” to prevent re-infection. Fortunately the experience from SARS appears to show no reinfections.
There is one thing that might yet turn this around – the availability of reasonably sensitive quick mass testing. That would allow to (self-) isolate the true infected, instead of having to isolate everybody from everyone.
All it takes is to reduce the number of people who get infected by someone who has it to below one, and it will fizzle out. Finding infected early is hugely preferable over infecting so many people that there are too few left to infect.
LeSving wrote:
It’s just that LT would never go to such a drastic step if they didn’t find it necessary
What they find necessary and what is necessary are not necessarily (sorry…) the same thing.
This is politically motivated more than anything else, just as the Norwegian and Danish border closures are politically motivated. If you look at the current statistics, it is rather Sweden, Finland and Germany who should close their borders to Norway and Denmark!
Not that I’m advocating border closures. When the virus has already begun spreading uncontrollably in a country, border closures will make no difference to the health situation but will damage the economy needlessly.
On March 6, our President was saying « don’t stop living, see your friends and go out ».
Apparently, you can’t drive from France to Germany if you don’t have a very good reason to do so. Police checks on main roads.
What did they say about Schengen a few weeks ago ?
The world is really changing. I think this will be a huge disaster for all of us – unless people take it seriously and seriously self isolate for a good number of weeks. Currently, lots of people – especially the younger ones – think it is a bit of a joke.
Jujupilote wrote:
Police checks on main roads.
Border lockdown, house arrest, closure of almost everything. Police/Army on the streets. Ban on large gatherings? Depends where your conspiracy sits.
1. Create Global panic.
2. Create a Pandemic
3. Close & Isolate borders
4. Segregate elderly within those borders.
5. introduce more virus (water/sewage systems)
6. Eliminate 40% of population.
Solved – Pension deficit, Culled air transport, solving Climate Emergency (Remember that a few weeks ago), and culled the weakest financially draining companies.
Re introduce a global management system – the State will protect you.
Im off to write my book….
Sadly, the Master (Tom Clancy) is not around anymore so there is an opening for just this sort of thing 
Much as I dislike it I occasionally check the BBC news website to see what they are saying, and have repeatedly noticed a headline about" how coronavirus could affect your festival plans".
No Sh*t Sherlock as they say. I do think that if a popstar or similar celebrity type that’s popular at the moment took seriously ill that may change the attitude.
If I understand right South Korea, Japan and other countries who suffered badly with SARS are pretty switched on to the problem and solutions. So locking down, masks, hygine, testing etc.
Over here I think we were overconfident, and wouldn’t want to dream of disrupting the easy movement of people and removing of borders. Placing feelings over facts. The “hug a chinese” in Italy movement for example. I think the WHO encouraging travel did not help either with its early advice.
