Let's go with the war analogy then. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, did we fall back and pull our pacific fleet from Hawaii and regroup in the mainland? What we did instead was galvanized together as a nation, gathered intelligence to understand the enemy's strength and movements, cracked their code, and planned a counterattack that culminated in the victory at Midway. To deal with this pandemic, we need to do the same. Unite as a country and gather intelligence. To fight an enemy, we need to understand the who we are fighting against. What we need to know is the scope of the pandemic, and right now we are not doing that.
We don't have enough infection tests to adequately identify hot spots to manage, and we aren't even doing antibody testing for the most part to really understand the full scope of the spread, and what are the more accurate true hospitalization rate and mortality rate.
To use another war analogy, when the Germans blitzed the UK, did the Brits stop what they were doing and fall back? What they did was to protect the most vulnerable population, particularly children, and relocated them further away, while the rest of the population continued to contribute to the war and defense efforts, hence keep calm and carry on. To fight this pandemic effectively we cannot let it destroy our way of life. What we need to do is to protect the vulnerable population: the elderly and people with underlying health conditions. The hot spots for spread are mostly at nursing homes and hospitals, where unfortunately most of the vulnerable populace is. We need to focus on managing the spread at those places. For example, we need to test all the healthcare workers and nursing home staff to make sure they are not infected and spreading to the vulnerable people, and test the elderly to catch infections early to ensure higher survival outcome. We need to have
more antibody tests to see who among the medical staff have gained immunity, and have them work on COVID-19 cases so as to keep the other medical staff safe. Through these strategic measures we can save more lives and keep our healthcare system afloat.
It seems that most of the people think of the exit strategy as an all or nothing scenario: either full lockdown until we starve the virus out, or resuming all businesses with no changes. Either option is untenable. Lockdowns lasting months will destroy people's livelihood, and
we are already at 17 million unemployed. Loss of jobs means
higher risk of death and
potential social unrest. Plus with a very long incubation period, asymptomatic spread and global travel,
the virus can easily make a comeback. However, if we resume business with no precautions in place there will be a lot more infections and overwhelm our healthcare system, which leads to
disproportionally high mortality rates for everyone. The right exit strategy will be a combination of more testings, more approved treatment methods, protecting our vulnerable population, and reopening the economy at a measured pace to ensure social distancing, until
we can get a vaccine in about a year. Just like the Brits in WW2, we need to keep calm and carry on until the Americans join the war effort (in this case, vaccine).
