[Fuusmchat] Fw: It’s going to be difficult

Fri Apr 10 10:23:16 CDT 2020

It’s going to be difficult

From: David Leonhardt 
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2020 7:55 AM
To: marthamcg at suddenlink.net 
Subject: It’s going to be difficult

What the next phase of the virus may look like.

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                  April 10, 2020

                 By David Leonhardt

                  Opinion Columnist

                First: The Times’s project on “The America We Need” continues, with Yaryna Serkez and me on the charts that show why America will struggle after the coronavirus crisis and Viet Than Nguyen on the ideas that won’t survive the crisis.

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                The virus: A Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Tomas Pueyo published a post on Medium last month called “The Hammer and the Dance.” It was a manifesto about how societies had to respond to the coronavirus, and it’s been viewed millions of times.

                The hammer referred to the harsh initial steps necessary to stop the spread of the virus. We’re doing those now, and they’re working. The number of new confirmed cases each day stopped rising last week, both globally and in the United States.

                But the dance — the more nuanced response that must come next — is just as important, and may end up being much more difficult than many people realize. “True normalcy is likely far off,” Jared Baeten, a University of Washington epidemiologist, told me.

                I want to use this morning’s newsletter to help you understand what the next phase of the virus may look like. I see four major aspects of that next phase:

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                1. The new abnormal. By next month, the number of new cases could be quite low across much of the United States. But that won’t mean life can return to normal. The virus won’t have disappeared, and a return to normal activity would spark new outbreaks.

                At that point, restaurants may reopen — but with people sitting only at every other table. Offices may reopen — but with workers alternating between on and off days, as has happened in parts of Asia. Large gatherings where people come in close contact, like sporting events, concerts and conferences, could still be a long time off. “That’s going to be hard,” Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told me, “and I don’t know that most Americans have come to grips with that.”

                2. Testing, testing, testing. Even a partial return to normal life will require tremendous amounts of testing — testing of anyone who develops potential symptoms as well as random testing to know where hot spots are developing. The United States remains behind on testing and will need to continue catching up in coming weeks.

                3. Contact tracing. That’s the technical term for tracking down anybody who has come in contact with a person who’s newly diagnosed with the virus. It is, as Caitlin Rivers of Johns Hopkins University says, “very laborious.” The city of Wuhan’s efforts included 1,800 contact-tracing teams, each containing five people. Some other countries are using personal cellphone data, closed-circuit cameras and credit card data to help their tracing efforts. Americans may not be comfortable with that approach — which would mean the American effort could either be less effective or more labor-intensive.

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                4. Quarantine. Knowing who has the virus isn’t enough, of course. People with new cases must be kept away from everyone else, immediately. Ideally, they wouldn’t go to normal hospitals to be tested; they would go to special clinics. And they wouldn’t be allowed to go home and retrieve personal items, either. A thorny question: What happens when somebody with the virus refuses to be quarantined?

                This next phase is going to be difficult. People will be impatient to return to their old lives. But here is the cruel reality: The places that return too quickly — and cause new outbreaks — will be the ones that end up suffering the longest periods of social distancing in the end.

                Forward this newsletter to friends … 

                … and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s free and published every weekday, with help from my colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick.

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