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by trianglesphere 2226 days ago
There is some info that hints that the people at home are not venturing out much.

I personally find this alarming that there is still widespread community spread. In my more rural state I think there is community spread, but nursing homes and long term care facilities are still dominating hospitalizations and deaths.

4 comments

It seems like one of the primary differences between countries that have effectively stopped Covid-19 like South Korea and Taiwan, and the US is how people are quarantined.

In the countries that were effective at stopping the spread, they quarantined sick people outside of their house. Since transmission is so effective its almost a guarantee that the rest of your household will catch it if you stay home, either by touching a shared doorknob, then touching their face, or by droplets landing on surfaces, or any number of other mechanisms.

We should seriously consider paying for hotel rooms for people that test positive. The total cost would likely be far lower than letting them infect the rest of their family.

> I personally find this alarming that there is still widespread community spread.

You should probably expect it - you only end community spread in short order with R=0. With, say R=0.5, you get something like a ten day half-life for number cases. Furthermore, tests tend to have ramped up after social restrictions, so number of new cases isn't a useful figure outside of the context of % of positive tests, and deaths are a lagging indicator.

In both France and Italy seven weeks of hard lockdown have only reduced deaths to about a quarter in that time-frame.

>"There is some info that hints that the people at home are not venturing out much."

What are those hints exactly? Cell phone tower data, metro card swipes, bandwidth usage? I'm guessing it's not yet warm enough for power consumption(ACs usage) to be an indicator.

If there is much socialising and lack of testing and tracing, it may be alarming due to new cases. In places without contagion, there needs to be preparedness, or risk another round. Italy/France/Spain took their time until lockdown and rest of Europe learned from that. This needs planning and leadership, then opening may be OK.