[confeit]

https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-how-hospitals-a...

> estimated projections of as many as 96 million cases in the US, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 480,000 deaths associated with the novel coronavirus.

All Western countries moved to fase 2 of epidemic control: Stop testing and contact tracing, since you have many many clusters of local community spread and no idea where it is coming from. They are hesitant to come out and outright say it. Some do, but not with permission of their superiors:

https://nypost.com/2020/03/13/ohio-health-officials-believe-...

Mild cases continue to spread, and don't self-isolate, because they may not even realize they are infected.

China and South Korea have laws that allow for containment: If you message your friend on WeChat and say you have a cough, then you can expect a visit from the Chinese containment crew. If you buy cough syrup in the drug store with your credit card, then South Korea health officials know this.

Containment is pragmatically impossible with an r0 > 2 in the West. Just slowing down is possible.

[threeseed]

Australia and NZ already have laws for containment that are being used to forcibly quarantine people who don't want to.

Western countries likely have laws already and even still it isn't hard to pass new emergency, sunsetting ones.

[confeit]

In Italy they use old laws for murder when you violate your isolation and infect others.

Australia, NZ, U.S., Italy, they all see sustained local community spread. Australia is still exponentially increasing. Shutting down flights when there is local community spread is show politics, something to point to afterwards and say: We took decisive action. It is purely symbolic.

Sure, U.S. could pass emergency law and use their military surveillance systems to track, tag, and contact trace all of their civilians, as if they were Chinese spies.

But is this desirable in a free society? And what difference does it make when there are 100.000 infections in a single state, of which you will miss a 100 and start all over again 2-3 weeks later, but now with 99.900 angry citizens with guns?

One of the reasons that SARS-CoV is deemed a useable bioweapon is exactly because isolation security methods are very expensive and invasive at scale. The cultural damage would be enormous if people receive letters from the government after they had a private chat on Facebook about symptoms.