Tomas Pueyo does a technical but clear explanation of the current, most aggressive planning regarding how the US–and the world–should deal with COVID–19. The conversation has turned to the relative merits and limitations of mitigation strategies vs suppression, which has found clear explication in the UK’s Imperial College Report. Regarding China’s response, he notes:

This graph shows the new cases in the entire Hubei region (60 million people) every day since 1/23. Within 2 weeks, the country was starting to get back to work. Within ~5 weeks it was completely under control. And within 7 weeks the new diagnostics was just a trickle. Let’s remember this was the worst region in China.

The fallacy I’m seeing propagated online is that we’re doing the same thing that China did and now their problem is over… so in three weeks, we’ll be clear here in the US. That’s not the case at all.

The suppression strategies that have worked in Asian countries include more than asking people to stay home and testing sick people. Suppression involves quarantine of the sick (at the very least, home quarantine, but other countries have instituted far stricter measures of this). It involves contact tracing.

And in truth, it’s expected that suppression strategies–which are designed to reduce the spread of the virus–won’t result in any kind of herd immunity. As such, until an effective vaccine can be crafted, suppression strategies will have to be reinstituted when the virus re-emerges. Which it likely will, if the Spanish Flu of 1918 is any guide:

The first pandemic influenza wave appeared in the spring of 1918, followed in rapid succession by much more fatal second and third waves in the fall and winter of 1918–1919, respectively.

Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance – Tomas Pueyo – Medium