It is a bit soon for the US, but Austria looks to be one of the first countries to begin reopening. Interesting at how they are going about it. Reopening small shops, everyone wears masks at the beginning and then opening larger shops and restaurants later.
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Wow, that is great, but seems way too soon for the US, at least in the NY metro area.
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Agreed, certainly not going to happen in much of the US soon, but interesting to see what others are doing and follow if they end up with problems or it works.
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Here we’ve been told the lockdowns will be in place for at least three months, and the pandemic (and physical distancing, lockdowns of varying degrees) could continue for a year or two, depending on when a vaccine comes along…
Yes. The world is reacting in many different ways. To me (and I think to epidemiologists) everyone of these threads is a great research project, that can help the rest of the world figure out what works and what doesn’t.
I must say, from the Bay Area, that I am glad it is someone else experimenting with it. I read that we appear to be still another 40-50 days from peak–although our SIP plans may have shortened that some?
I know I get physically uncomfortable when someone gets a bit too close to me these days.
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I don’t think we’re 40 to 50 days from SIP anymore; I think that model shortened the time substantially and now we’re about 2 weeks out from peak.
We don’t have the tools in place to reopen society. WE need a system for contact tracing and testing and isolation. But I’m concerned there’s not enough effort in creating one of those.
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WA state appears to be leveling off and maybe turning the corner… to early to tell for sure though
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Each state has a contact tracing system, although if the news in my state is any indication each state is likely going to need some additional resources assigned for the rest of the year.
As far as testing, we are now in a much better position than we were in that regard.
Whether people will do the right thing and self isolate, well I think we all know the answer to that, and the asymptomatic patients are going to present a challenge. So it will be good to increase the accessibility to testing for everyone.
In California Newsom had announced a week ago or so that the state was switching from containment to mitigation, which meant they were not tracing contacts because they assumed widespread community spread. That’s largely because they don’t have either the tests to trace new cases or the manpower to identify them. The contact tracing systems now are painstaking and require public health officials, so they don’t scale!
But if we can use digital tools without tremendous invasion of privacy that would be a game changer.
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Here is what Oregon is doing to create a tool for tracking.