[newacct583]

California is split. The Bay Area is past peak, socal is still growing. Washington and Oregon are well past peak, around half of their peak new infection rate. New York is crossing under 1/3 now. Likewise New England and a few other smaller states are clearly over the hump.

This stuff works. All these places could have easily blown right through health care capacity like Milan, but they didn't. The really frustrating thing is watching it work, then watching everyone figure things aren't so bad and demand that we "open up", when the only reason things aren't so bad is because we didn't.

Another month for these early states. Just be patient. As for everyone else, it's going to be much longer than if they had just followed the lead of the lockdown set.

[roca]

That doesn't really answer what containment means or what the long-term strategy is.

If you relax lockdowns while you still have a significant number of active cases then expect outbreaks to reoccur. So is the plan to stay locked down until active cases in the applicable area are essentially zero, i.e. eradication? If so, how long will that take? If not, what is the plan?

I know there's no easy solution here but even my well-informed California friends don't seem to know what the plan is.

[newacct583]

This stuff has been written about ad nauseum. Every think tank has some variant they've published. Here's Ezra Klein's review of a bunch of them (he's pretty bearish on whether they'll work): https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215494/coronavirus-plans-soc...

The basic idea is that you stay locked down until the outbreak size is small enough that you can test every contact of every positive case to catch them before they spread.

This takes a lot of testing. And unfortunately the one body in the USA with the financial resources to foot that bill is conspicuously silent on a plan for rolling out expanded testing. But this is how it has to work. The alternative is, as everyone here loves to scream, more expensive.

But there's no magic wand where people just decide to start working again. That won't happen, either becuase they're scared or because the outbreaks run out of control again (which is to say: people won't exit lockdown voluntarily without containment ever, either they're scared now or they'll be scared of the results they see).

So call your representatives and get testing funded and scaled. Really there is no other option.

[roca]

Yes, lots of experts have plans. But it's not clear what the California state strategy is, nor most of those other countries you mentioned earlier, and they're the ones who make the rules.

I agree with everything else you say. Except calling my representative won't help because I'm not American and I already know what the NZ strategy is...