Complete lockdown isn’t really possible as care workers don’t generally live in the nursing homes full time, nor do doctors live in the hospitals full time.
A total lockdown whilst quite possibly effective would cause a lot of deaths and I can’t even begin to think how it could be implemented.
A total lockdown is obviously impossible because many still have to be out and about working e.g. food production and distribution, police, military.
Just heard the Oxford vaccine has failed to deliver immunity in monkey tests. They have already injected it into about 1000 volunteers.
OTOH this one from the US looks more hopeful.
According to the newest reports the virus is more than twice as deadly as previously thought. The reason is that it is spread much less than what was believed. Overall, 0.7% who gets Covid 19 will die they believe. About 3.9 % will be hospitalized. In Norway somewhere between 0.58 and 0.73 % have caught the virus, against more than 1% from earlier estimates. Even in Spain, less than 5% of the population has had covid 19. Herd immunity is far far away from even being a factor.
The report also say that in May, the “R” has risen to 1.0 again from 0.4 or whatever it was earlier. But, this is no big deal they say, because so few is infected. It’s more important to identify clusters early on and cut the chains of spreading.
I wonder what the reports say a month from now 
I think this sounds reasonable though, from my own experience. Very few have got covid 19. I don’t know, or know of a single person who has got it. But I know several who say they believe they have got it (100% sure according to themselves), but haven’t tested. I mean, hypochondria is probably a more widespread disease than Covid 19
It’s really funny… this piece just appeared on FB. It says the exact opposite, and – as always – they have, wait for it, a professor of this and that saying it, so it must be true. It is one of a thousand similar articles all over the internet.
I call BS on it, simply because I have not seen a single study which supports its claims (of how many are / have been infected). But loads of people are buying into it.
Yes, exactly, if the cases are scarce enough, with enough testing capacity one can get on top of this thing. That should have been done at the start really (starting with locking up all the returning skiers, but only after I got home on 22nd Jan 
) but nobody, except S. Korea, and possibly Germany, had the test kits. That lesson will be learnt for the next one, which is probably already on its way from the usual place where they eat everything that moves.
alioth wrote:
A colleague of mine had to do it, and it’s pretty unpleasant (involves swabbing in the throat till you gag, then having a swab stuffed up your nose such that it feels someone is scraping the back of your brain with a pickaxe – that’s what his description was).
Nah. I had one done prior to an op I had to have last week and while not something I’d like to do for fun, it wasn’t all that bad. Nasal swab, veeeeery far up the nose!
As well as starving a not insignificant portion of the population.
None of the countries who did this had anyone starve.
An early total lockdown means the ORDER by law to stay home with the exception of very few vital services plus food stores with massive restrictions in the number of people who can get in and only with masks e.t.c. locking people down so that only ONE person per household can shop and nobody can move beyond a certain range of maybe 2-3 km depending on the area. Austria did this, Bulgaria did this, and quite some others like Spain albeit far too late. Early means the moment the first cases appear, not once the whole country is full of potential carriers.
I would add to this: Shut down airline flights to and from countries which report cases again very early. This was the missed bus by the WHO and others who did simply not do their job in December and January plus of course the fact that the Chinese lied.
Had Europe locked down as a whole in the beginning of February, the whole thing would have been over by mid march.
But unfortunately, so called “free” democratic societies seem incapable of dealing with real national crisis. Looking what happened here, what is still happening with protests, ignorants and so on, the western world is a sitting duck for any such disease to ravage and spread. IMHO this has to change. Authorities need to be able to lock down whole continents at the snap of a finger. Otherwise the 2nd wave of this one will do its job, not to speak of what will happen if e.g. something like Ebola becomes airborne and spreads similarly to this one. Maybe people will realize then but I am sure that there will again be millions of idiots posting stupid theories about Bill Gates and who else not instead of complying with orders given.
With the lack of discipline, the egoism and sheer stupidity shown in the last months, does anyone here think that GB at the time would have survived WW2 or any other such crisis? Likely not. Our society has proven totally unable to work together for the common good when called for. Instead they whine about not being able to go flying or do whatever else for a few weeks, therefore dragging the whole thing over years instead of weeks.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Authorities need to be able to lock down whole continents at the snap of a finger.
It isn’t that easy. Lockdowns by themselves cause deaths for a long time in the future by damaging the economy. We could see that death figures rose during the latest finance crisis. Also, infant mortality is very dependent on national wealth.
You may cure the disease but kill the patient. Things are not so black and white as you make them.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
with the exception of very few vital services plus food stores with massive
This by defninition is not a total lockdown. It means you still have people moving around, It’s like the issue for hospitals and care homes (that seem to be the highest risk areas at the moment) the people working there are not locked down and do then also go to the supermarkets.
Also, infant mortality is very dependent on national wealth.
And yet it’s lower in Cuba than the USA.
does anyone here think that GB at the time would have survived WW2 or any other such crisis?
Not under the leadership of anyone who was up for election the last time round. But on a personal and local level people round here have done quite well IMO.
You may cure the disease but kill the patient. Things are not so black and white as you make them.
I think they are. If this had been handled the same way by WHO as SARS was handled, this would have been over by now. Hard, fast (and unpopular) action is what is needed. WHO could have used the big drums this time also, and stopped this thing, but didn’t. Too afraid of becoming unpopular. Too afraid of stepping on toes.
