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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Won't this just delay the outbreak for three weeks?

It seems we're just trying to delay the inevitable.

And before you respond about how we're trying to slow exposure so medical services are available -- that would imply we're going to need to quarantines for a few weeks every few weeks for, what, a year? More? There's no way this action is sustainable.

This analysis suggests that actually flattening the curve would require us to slow this virus down over the course of a decade:

https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-dea...

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> that would imply we're going to need to quarantines for a few weeks every few weeks for, what, a year? More? There's no way this action is sustainable.

That's exactly what it implies (or a continuous lockdown for months). It may seem like a crazy proposition today after a century of life being relatively tame, but WWII lasted six years.

This is what we're facing. We're in survival mode through the end of the year. It is crazy, but we'll get through it.

A virus that probably has about the mortality rate of the common flu is not comparable to freaking WWII

What besides a total war has prompted a shutdown of all non-essential businesses?

besides the French president just announced "we are at war".

The people who will start flooding the hospitals in the next few days are infected now. This action assumes these emergent cases are about to hit and will be followed by a leveling off of demand and increase of resources (e.g. temp hospital space).

No, it’s been proven in both China and SK state level action can halt the virus. Once the exponentially growing death count is halted, we need to be in a hovering pattern while we search for a potential prophylactic- there are a few clinical trials underway that may bear fruit by summer.

flattenthecurve.com has a good general audience to smart person presentation on why this is needed. For a more expert audience, the recent report from Imperial College [1] provides detailed analysis.

[1]: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-ana...

[edit, as apparently you edited your comment after I posted my response] The essay you linked praises the complete lockdown in Wuhan as being effective. That said, it's written by an AI researcher, as opposed to a public health expert.

But given that it only applies to a limited geographical region with free movement in and out not restricted it is unclear it will have the desired effect. This policy needs to be at the state or national level to be effective.

It would be better to have a coordinated response on this. But as a wise leader once said, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

It's not about a specifically bounded result, it's about being either a flatter curve or a taller one. The more people act in the interest of flattening the curve is the benefit.

That report indicates that shelter-in-place will need to continue for approximately two years, with intermittent breaks.

It's a model, and a lot can change. In that time frame, it's actually quite reasonable to expect we'll develop effective vaccines and treatments. We might be able to roll out comprehensive and fine-grained testing (as has been done to some extent in countries like South Korea and Singapore).

The alternative is to just let it burn through the population, hoping it takes out mostly economically unproductive people (the sick and elderly), and letting business as usual go on. Some might find this an acceptable policy, but I do not.

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