Slowing the infection is good. Halting it, regionally, is idiotic.
I read this article, and I can only hope that it is merely being seen as an exercise in studying the spread of this virus.
If the only key to fighting this virus were to eliminate the existence of infected people in a given region, the fight would have been over before it started.
Because that is where almost the entire world WAS on day 0. When there was only 1 infected person globally, every other region, city, state and nation had exactly 0 cases. If having zero cases brought any special immunity we wouldn't have a pandemic.
It is actually the reverse which is true. Wuhan China is probably now the safest place on the Earth from COVID-19 right now. And this is because it has the largest number of recovered cases. Thus, it has the largest number of potentially immune people. It has the greatest population density of people who cannot contract or spread the virus. This greatly hampers the viruses ability to propagate there.
The reason the virus spread is because it is a very efficient virus at spreading among human populations and no one has any immunity to it.
Given the degree to which this virus has already spread, if it weren't for the health implications (IE: the cases where symptoms are serious or cause death), the best course of action would be to just let everyone get sick as soon as possible.
Eliminating the disease entirely, and before a large enough percentage of the population catches it while there are still so many active cases outside of that region will just trigger a second wave. This is exactly why measles is making a comeback. More people refusing to vaccinate is reducing the percentage of people in the population which are immune and promoting the spread.
And a second wave has the potential of being worse than the first for reasons that are more social than anything. People are practising social distancing, and judging by some of the posts of social media, not everyone is handling it so well. But, many are committed, and putting in the effort to reduce their exposure to others.
If we eliminate the virus regionally, lift the restrictions and many people never got sick, a lot more people would likely be unwilling to put up with a second wave of restrictions that would come with a second outbreak. It would be a lot easier to dismiss the value or effectiveness of the measures. Especially if you didn't get sick the first time around, you had a shitty time of it, and then a second wave came anyway.
This virus is NOT going away. It is simply going to get to a point where enough people have been exposed and developed an immunity that it drops to a place where we see a tolerable number of cases annually.
I would suggest that this is also a part of the reason why governments are, in general, not getting all "martial law" on the population except when it escalates out of control as it is in Italy right now, or was in China. In effect, as a population, we need a steady rate of infections to build up some level of herd immunity. But, we need to balance that out, by making sure that we keep the number of critical cases to a place where the health system can step in to reduce the number of fatalities.
Pandora's box is open. We can't put the COVID-19 back in it. Our best strategy is to develop our herd immunity. Not try and eliminate the disease in small pockets early on. Practice social distancing. Slow the spread. But, understand that eliminating the virus in Toronto, or Ontario or even Canada for a time is meaningless if it isn't near simultaneously eradicated globally, or a decent percentage has of the population has developed an immunity.
If the only key to fighting this virus were to eliminate the existence of infected people in a given region, the fight would have been over before it started.
Because that is where almost the entire world WAS on day 0. When there was only 1 infected person globally, every other region, city, state and nation had exactly 0 cases. If having zero cases brought any special immunity we wouldn't have a pandemic.
It is actually the reverse which is true. Wuhan China is probably now the safest place on the Earth from COVID-19 right now. And this is because it has the largest number of recovered cases. Thus, it has the largest number of potentially immune people. It has the greatest population density of people who cannot contract or spread the virus. This greatly hampers the viruses ability to propagate there.
The reason the virus spread is because it is a very efficient virus at spreading among human populations and no one has any immunity to it.
Given the degree to which this virus has already spread, if it weren't for the health implications (IE: the cases where symptoms are serious or cause death), the best course of action would be to just let everyone get sick as soon as possible.
Eliminating the disease entirely, and before a large enough percentage of the population catches it while there are still so many active cases outside of that region will just trigger a second wave. This is exactly why measles is making a comeback. More people refusing to vaccinate is reducing the percentage of people in the population which are immune and promoting the spread.
And a second wave has the potential of being worse than the first for reasons that are more social than anything. People are practising social distancing, and judging by some of the posts of social media, not everyone is handling it so well. But, many are committed, and putting in the effort to reduce their exposure to others.
If we eliminate the virus regionally, lift the restrictions and many people never got sick, a lot more people would likely be unwilling to put up with a second wave of restrictions that would come with a second outbreak. It would be a lot easier to dismiss the value or effectiveness of the measures. Especially if you didn't get sick the first time around, you had a shitty time of it, and then a second wave came anyway.
This virus is NOT going away. It is simply going to get to a point where enough people have been exposed and developed an immunity that it drops to a place where we see a tolerable number of cases annually.
I would suggest that this is also a part of the reason why governments are, in general, not getting all "martial law" on the population except when it escalates out of control as it is in Italy right now, or was in China. In effect, as a population, we need a steady rate of infections to build up some level of herd immunity. But, we need to balance that out, by making sure that we keep the number of critical cases to a place where the health system can step in to reduce the number of fatalities.
Pandora's box is open. We can't put the COVID-19 back in it. Our best strategy is to develop our herd immunity. Not try and eliminate the disease in small pockets early on. Practice social distancing. Slow the spread. But, understand that eliminating the virus in Toronto, or Ontario or even Canada for a time is meaningless if it isn't near simultaneously eradicated globally, or a decent percentage has of the population has developed an immunity.
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