I agree and disagree at the same time. Let me tell you why.
Extreme measures without a plan and a data basis will certainly make matters worse. We need a plan, which Western countries have. What is somewhat lacking is the basis to implement it. Aggressive testing of everybody would provide this basis, like South Korea does.
Which increases my critique points of the response to a total of two, a viable social media campaign to inform people and prevent panic reactions, which could totally provided and carried by tech companies. So, Google, Twitter, Facebook, if you are listening do something good with your social power! And the aggressive testing of people, everyone, starting with contact persons, people having traveled to risk areas and ultimately everyone.
Other than that I am quite satisfied, in Europe at least. The US seem to be a different story.
I am not sure there is much time left to be satisfied.
Coming 10-14 days will display how the most of the rest of the Europe will actually handle the critical situation.
Only country that appears to be doing something right is Germany. They should tell others what is their trick to keep most of the people alive. Of course they have highest number of intensive care places in EU https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-012-2627-8#... so perhaps just brute force is how they do it but I have heard (but was not able to confirm) that they are also isolating their elderly such that they will just receive food and other goods behind their doors. I do not know how right this is but this would make sense.
As someone who's monitoring the situation over in Germany because I have family there, Germany is definitely not doing "something right". There is a lack of direction in handling the situation, as well as information for the citizens.
People are calling 116117 but getting hang up on, and the weaker central government (due to obvious historical reasons) means that the response differs state to state. Much like in the US.
Communiction and information realls sucks, that's true. Same goes for a coordinated approach between states. Other then that the situation is more or less under control, as far numbers tell us.
Regarding school closings and such things, at last Bavaria is prepared for that (my sons school is over 1,000 students and might be clsed in the next one or two weeks regardless of cases due to that number of people there, but that is just a snapshot, so).
Given the mortality rates by age bracket, this makes a huge amount of sense. Subject to their mental and emotional needs being given every consideration, of course.
Assuming (1) a large amount of the public will eventually be infected, (2) infections are (generally speaking) only fatal in older people... why not best protect the most vulnerable among us?
At this point, nursing homes and assisted living facilities should be staff-only, guaranteed paid sick leave, with teleconferencing equipment set up for families.
Wait until new case rate peaks, then start looking at relaxing the restrictions.
What needs to happen is to reduce the connectedness of the human social graph. The elderly don't need to be totally isolated. They can be seen by family, friends, but we need to limit the number of people that each older person can see, and the number of people that are seen by each younger person. That's what this social distancing is about. The virus travels along nodes where our paths through spacetime intersect or come close, and that is in many cases closely modeled by the human social graph. If you reduce the connectedness of the graph, you reduce the number of potential intersections each carrier has with uninfected people. You do that enough, and you can get the reproduction rate below 1. You do that enough and we can catch up to the infection front and seal it off.
At least, that's the hope as I understand it. That's what I'm trying to help do by staying home and seeing only close friends and only in 1:1 settings.
I'm fifty +- some and became isolated without realising during the years I cared for my mother.
You want to give the old folks, among who I am myself in this respect, something to live for. Attention is the catnip.
Want to kill the olds in droves? Isolate them.
I'm bloody serious about this and believe it's tort that needs a Court hearing for the human sake alone. You don't know anything until you friend all died. Mine did except for who then exited into a new world of economic paranoia and now hides in a regular job after increasingly failing to deal with isolation in the context of a young loving family around him at home at least. I'm so intensely proud of my buddy but he's a truly impractical link back to life for me
From experience, maybe one hour away from the Austrian border, easures are nowhere near what Austria or Denmark are doing. There is a 14 day self-quarantine rule in place for public institutions like schools and so. When you have been to what is determined to be a high risk zone, you have to self quarantine for 14 days, starting with your last day in that zone (happened to us, we have four days left till Sunday). Most big companies I know of have the same rules in place.
Events over 1,000 people are cancelled, how that applies to larger schools is currently being discussed (source: my sons school is over 1,000 students).
Communication is a little bit of an issue so, we found out about the high risk zone declaration by chance, more or less. On the other hand, case numbers are really low, so I think it's kind of trade-of thing. In denmark the increase in cases triggered the response.
In France on the hand, everybody with any symptoms resembling Corona are sent on sick leave for at least a week, over the phone. People not needed in the office work from home.
Perhaps this is simply structural, multiple generations are not living together (less elderly among infected) there is more ICU capability (easier to put people in need under intensive care).
I could not find demographic breakdown of infected in Germany. This could suggest if these assumptions could be true.
> Other than that I am quite satisfied, in Europe at least.
Not in Italy. Our government changed emergency plans at least three times since Sunday and as far as I can tell is not aggressive enough in finding contacts and isolating them. The current trend is just to lock most of the people up and hoping the curve flattens.
Italy seems to me the only western country to have taken decisive action. For once I am actually rather proud of my country. What are the other European countries waiting for?
I'm not proud at all: communication was horrible (what do you think you can accomplish by changing things every few days?), caused panic (it's the fault of those who cause confusion, not of the confused), and it was reluctant in getting a no-red tape team up (even "emergency" supplies of respirators needed to go through the stupid bureaucracy).
There is a lot that could've done better than the current approach.
I think that given the magnitude of the adopted measures it is understandable that they were decided in the course of a few days. Stopping a country of 60 million is no joke. I'm not sure about the panic, but it seems hard to avoid when you tell a whole coutry to not leave their homes. We were also in uncharted territory, in the west: other countries can watch and follow what Italy has done. And yet they seem too slow in taking action. The US hasn't even started testing people.
> I think that given the magnitude of the adopted measures it is understandable that they were decided in the course of a few days
There were a few errors done in my view:
1. First, no preparation at all was done at any level. Other countries are now prepping their ICUs to prepare for the incoming tsunami.
2. Horrible communication and execution. The PM can't be both the head of the government and the one enacting the emergency measures (as in putting them into practice short of giving orders), at least not in bureaucracy-land like my country, and this PM in particular is weak and not particularly capable (and made key communication errors like blaming the hospital where the first case was recorded).
3. Laws given without clarity of "appropriate" or "not appropriate" behavior, which required constant clarification from the government
4. The leak of the "executive order" (inappropriate wording, hard to translate it to the actual Italian way of doing it) draft before it was completed, which caused mass panic and exodus (and instead of blaming the "idiots", people should investigate why that happened).
5. Total lack of clarity of how long the lockdown measures will last (if they don't change yet again).
It's not like changing measures every day will change the curve immediately (first lockdown on Sunday, then another on Monday, then more restrictive measures within a few days).
Lastly, all of this flurry of activity from the PM, aside pressure from other involved parties (like local governments), is, according to rumors, done because the current PM is likely to be asked to step down sooner or later (the country was at a political paralysis before the outbreak, and his handling of the crisis made matters worse).
Followig up contact persons ends to be meaningful once numbers are to high. Fro that point onwards, just closing everybody and everthing down right away is more effective. Following up individuals would have the same result anyway and take much longer.
Extreme measures without a plan and a data basis will certainly make matters worse. We need a plan, which Western countries have. What is somewhat lacking is the basis to implement it. Aggressive testing of everybody would provide this basis, like South Korea does.
Which increases my critique points of the response to a total of two, a viable social media campaign to inform people and prevent panic reactions, which could totally provided and carried by tech companies. So, Google, Twitter, Facebook, if you are listening do something good with your social power! And the aggressive testing of people, everyone, starting with contact persons, people having traveled to risk areas and ultimately everyone.
Other than that I am quite satisfied, in Europe at least. The US seem to be a different story.