[kstenerud]

It's your typical pandemic response:

- denial

- placating measures

- minor lockdowns

- major lockdowns and panic (running to the store to stockpile toilet paper, for some reason)

- total quarantine

- life slowly returns to normal

China is now on the final stage (restaurants and stores reopening, etc), with the rest of the world between 2 and 3 months behind.

Most people are unable to comprehend exponential growth, so this is the pattern that gets followed.

[grawprog]

>It's your typical pandemic response: - denial

- placating measures

- minor lockdowns

- major lockdowns and panic (running to the store to stockpile toilet paper, for some reason)

- total quarantine

- life slowly returns to normal

When in the last 100 years has this happened that you're basing your 'typical pandemic response' examples on?

It certainly hasn't happened in my lifetime...

[dijit]

Depends where you are in the world.

H1N1, SARS and Ebola are in recent memory, but they didn't reach my neck of the woods.

[MiroF]

H1N1 was not the same, at least. And SARS wasn't pandemic

[asix66]

And those who don't understand, or need a refresher on, exponential growth should watch this great video by 3Blue1Brown.

Exponential growth and epidemics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg

[voxadam]

While not specifically about the exponential growth of pandemics I've always liked the lecture "Exponential Growth, Population and Energy" by Dr. Albert Bartlett.

https://youtu.be/kZA9Hnp3aV4

[mirimir]

> - major lockdowns and panic (running to the store to stockpile toilet paper, for some reason)

Americans use lots of toilet paper.

[falcor84]

To save others like myself the time, here are some figures corroborating this on statista: https://www.statista.com/chart/15676/cmo-toilet-paper-consum...

[mirimir]

Thanks. Didn't know it was that bad.

I also suspect that most US consumer toilet paper is fluffier than the non US norm, with far fewer sheets per roll. So the 90g per roll conversion is misleading.

My favorite institutional style paper comes in 1000 sheet rolls, which weigh 187g. The consumer brand that I recently bought comes in 220 sheet rolls, which weigh 106g.

[cmurf]

It's not clear anyone avoids a second wave. Nor do we know how significant it could be.

We don't know about natural immunity duration, or if and when there's a vaccine, and for how long it will be effective. We don't know about mutations.

I think a lot of the questions are only answered 2 years from now.

[drstewart]

Total quarantine isn't happening in any western country

[drclau]

That is not correct for some days now. Many other countries in EU have entered a state of emergency with various levels of quarantine at national level: Italy (but that's old news), Spain, France, Belgium, Estonia etc. None as extreme as China, but measures are intensifying gradually.

In Czech Republic, only essential businesses are allowed to function, although the measures are not as extreme as they were in China. Restaurants are closed, or serve food only for takeaway, shopping centers are pretty much deserted, gatherings in large numbers are banned. Although, the quarantine is far from total: people still go outside, and parks are very crowded (some look like superspreaders congresses - that is, lots of kids playing), and surprisingly we are allowed to go to work, regardless of the type of business. In my opinion, this is allowed because doing otherwise would have significant economic costs, and so far it's hard to justify it: there are just 300+ confirmed cases in CZ. Of course, there will be plenty more unidentified cases, and the sh*t will hit the fan. It's just a matter of time.

[tartuffe]

As of tonight in France, the governement just forbad citizen to go outside FOR WHATEVER REASON unless you have an authorization delivered by the prime minister site for : 1) essential work that cannot be done remotly, 2) essential shopping and 3) walking / jogging alone to not get mad and stay healthy. For now, nobody really know anything about this authorization whose details will be available in the following hours.

[kyriakos]

How's this enforced?

[Noumenon72]

When you see the police, you will be arrested unless you begin jogging and sign an affidavit that you were getting mad. Then it's OK.

[tartuffe]

As long as you are lucky enough not to get caught by the cops, everything is fine. However, they start to deploy heavely and there is really poor chance you don't meet cops.

Once they caught you, they ask for the printed document [1] either properly filled with required information or handwritten on a paper. Next they keep it, so you have to provide another one the next time.

If you don't comply with the rules, you get fined from 38€ to 135€.

If you go out to buy food or other vital important goods (soap, toothpaste, ...), you are required to go only on governement approuved shops. For now, few people succeed to get that list of official shops and you see almost everyone going were they can find food.

Honestly, people are really scared and very angry because three to four days ago, the government said everyting is fine, no need to worry, let's keep calm, let's be goods citizen, don't hurry on shops, and bla and bla and bla.

In the end, civilized people like me just understood they have been abused because while they tried to stay good citizens, bastard emptied shops and as of now, you are very lucky if you can find something to eat or even a soap, at the price of hours long waiting queue on the parking of the shops.

By the way, even before the quarantine, you couldn't buy as many goods a you wanted : since yesterday morning and in almost every shops, supply is very, very limited and you can only buy a limited number of the same item, although the limits are not official and/or legal (for now).

It's not North Korea, but it's almost like ...

[1] https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/content/download/121663/976885...

[m4rtink]

Well, here in Czech Republic (in between Germany, Austria, Poland and Slovakia):

- state wide quarantine from Monday morning, people can go only to work, to get groceries or to hospital/doctor

- all puliblic gathering over 30 people banned, but probably moot due to the above

- borders closed, foreigners can't go in and citizens can't travel travel out

- cross border trains/buses shut down, flights stopped

- schools closed for ~week already

- only food, medicine and drug stores are open, all other shops are closed

- there is a new exception for stores selling fabrics and clothes, as people are using clothes/fabric to manufacture their own protective masks

- all restaurants closed, only food takeout is allowed

- public transport is generally running, but the driver is extra-protected to not be in contact with riders (no selling of tickets, etc.), in some cities public transport is free to avoid any contact with riders and personnel at all

- everyone who arrived from the outside from an at risk country needs to do 14 day quarantine or else get crazy fines and possibly jail time

- a couple towns and villages (around 20k people) have got extra quarantined due to of-nominal number of cases, people can't leave the are for at least 14 days

- the army is helping out the police with patrolling the border crossings and to distribute medical supplies, army aircraft also just went to a round trip to China for more medical materials from Shenzen

- hospitals are clearing of any non essential surgeries and patients who can go home

- medical school students have been drafted to help in hospitals

There is a nice Wikipedia page summarizing many of the restrictions and overall progress (case numbers, etc.):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_t...

Pretty tough and so far surprisingly well executed measures I would say. People are generally respecting the special rules and there is a rather low amount of grumbling, considering this is Czech Republic.

Also a lot of solidarity - theaters sewing face masks, universities enrolling computer labs to Folding@Home, teaching student taking care of children of medical personnel, middle school student doing grocery shopping for old people who are most at risk, etc.

Now let's hope this all works and we can get this over with in a reasonably time in good shape.

[kstenerud]

... except Italy

[drstewart]

Then what's the difference between total quarantine and major lockdown?

[panta-rhei]

Id assume, that the differences between minor lockdown, major lockdown and total lockdown (quarantine) are the same as for minor/major/total in every other context too. Minor x = a small quantity of all possible x, major x = a large quantity of all possible x, total x = all of all possible x. X in the given context would then be something like "measures to achieve isolation (on different levels) to decrease infection rate".

Practical example: Minor lockdown could be shutting down public places and canceling events that attract large crowds (>1000 people). Major lockdown could be shutting down all public places and closing borders. Total lockdown would be complete isolation of all individual people, as far as possible, for example via curfews and special protocols like for example (as they did in China) mailmen dropping packages on the doorstep instead of handing them over to you, and similar protocol changes to avoid direct contact between people. — And these three steps are in fact exactly what has been done or is in the process of being implemented right now in many countries.

[throwaway4787]

and France

[friede]

and spain

[mkurz]

and Austria: https://fm4.orf.at/stories/3000031/

[DanielleMolloy]

Germany is close, they just announce new measures bit by bit every day. Next step not unlikely to be total quarantine.

[mirekrusin]

Switzerland is in state of emergency since today, it's great because they can deploy military to help.

[vinay427]

It's not even close to the intense measures in Italy or Spain (for example), however. There's a good bit of discontent about that among people I talk to in Switzerland, but there's no good option so that's expected whatever they decide.

[heavenlyblue]

Does that assume the military is immune from the virus?

[LordHumungous]

And parts of the US

[AnimalMuppet]

Parts of the US have total quarantine? Which parts?

[geverett]

Total quarantine in Puerto Rico as well since 9pm on March 15th.

[tmpz22]

Rumors are it's about to happen in France

[tartuffe]

rumors are dead as it really happened : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22599579

[deviantfero]

It is close to happening in El Salvador