Seperate the population. The healthy young and able should move out temporarily to camps (which could be fun).
Rapid courses given to them will train the young to run the country and its economy, to fly the planes and captain the ships and drive the trucks, to run the labs and treat the patients with remote assistance from the experienced third and fourth generation. The elderly and vulnerable who will be in quarantine, will receive their care from trained and safe and healthy and possibly even immune young staff in safe-suits.
So that if the epidemic continues we can quickly climb out of it.
They will also take care of the younger generation, teach them and feed them without closing themselves off in quarantene, and can meanwhile study remotely from the vulnurable quaranteened people of elder age.-- pashute, Mar 18 2020 "Bring out your dead ! " http://www.google.c...pzoTz3CO4uEqzuN5VAwComing to a street near you, very soon ... [8th of 7, Mar 18 2020] Why ?
[-] Bad statistical analysis and epidemiology.
Those members of the population susceptible to the virus will inevitably be selected out. This is absolutely unavoidable and only a matter of time. It is called "natural selection" and interfering with the process is unwise.
Further, in terms of mortality, the current pandemic is not in any way a threat to the population as a whole. The majority of cases are undetected because they are completely asymptomatic.
In time the new strain will join all the other pathogens that are endemic in the environment.
The total excess deaths are insignificant as the victims could have equally well been killed by any cold or flu virus that happens along. It's only the novelty of the infective agent that attracts attention.
Bugs are EVERYWEHRE. People die all the time. 95%+ of Coronavirus deaths are in the 65+ cohort, and who have preexisting vulnerability - look at the WHO figures. Old people die more than young people. Get over it.-- 8th of 7, Mar 18 2020 "Get over it" - it seems as usual you got me wrong. I'm talking about getting the economy going, getting the commerce back up, getting manufacturing going, stopping the shutdown of business by using the part of the population that's less vulnurable to the virus. Are you saying there's no such thing?-- pashute, Mar 18 2020 No, that there's just no benefit from a shutdown. The virus has spread and will spread inexorably, and the vulnerable will perish. The only variable is "when" - not "if".
"Keep calm and carry on" is the appropriate response.-- 8th of 7, Mar 18 2020 We will enquire as to whether that is permissible; not all the information is in the public domain yet, although of course it will be eventually. There's no conspiracy (or at least no evidence of one*) - simply that the raw numbers are regarded as unverified and will be subject to peer review and revision before formal publishing. They are also changing on an hourly basis.
It is apparently considered inadvisable during the current media feeding frenzy to release data that are known to be only a snapshot of a rough approximation of the real dataset. It will be some months, even years, before reliable figures are available.
*However, it is always VERY suspicious when no evidence of a conspiracy can be found; it strongly suggests a cover-up ....-- 8th of 7, Mar 18 2020 Your "keep calm and carry on" approach means you assume it's at most another two months due. So, you say, do not prepare for a long run, and care only for the health which is an immediate life threatening issue but not for the business which will resiliantly get up on its feet. While on the other hand, my approach is talking about preparing a global response taking into account that this will continue for several months if not a year.
The bubonic plague, originally disputed to be several different types of disease, as we now know from research on many excavated mass burial sites from that plague, continued on for months on end, each time reaching new communities from 1347 to 1349 (and then continued on to less known sites like North Africa killing hundreds of thousands way into the 1600's). The followup catastrophy was war and massacre, as documented in the history of my people. However you look at it, even in the optimistic 2- month-only scenario, my plan - leaning mainly on the young leadership is to prepare a new generation of people who can help out those that must stay in quarantene and who are more vulnerable.
Since in terms of mortality there is no threat to the population as a whole, but statistically there are some who we can realize in advance are much more vulnerable, why not take a small set of people who would volunteer to so gladly, and get the economy, say in the USA but also in China, back up on its feet before any shortages begin to occur?
I'm not sure I understand why you differ? Which do you think is occuring in this argument? Do you think I am getting the facts wrong, or that I am concluding the wrong conclusions from the same facts (which we perhaps agree upon)? Or as a third option maybe it is just the question of how long you suppose this will continue, and that August is the latest date by which you expect it to calm down (at least in the States and Europe. Then what about Africa, East Europe and Central Asia, currently only started. And just remember, the summer doesn't seem to be a factor in Australia...-- pashute, Mar 18 2020 Yersinia Pestis has a completely different transmission mechanism (insect vector) and killed one third of the population.
There is little in the way of useful conclusions to be drawn from a historical and poorly documented epidemic which took place under radically different socioeconomic conditions, particularly widespread malnourishment of the general population, a high parasite burden, numerous other endemic pathogens such as TB and smallpox, plus very poor living conditions; a population predisposed to be rapidly overwhelmed by a novel pathogen.
And you can add to that an almost nonexistent knowledge of medicine and the principles of hygiene, plus medical responses that probably made things much worse rather than better. Unfortunately, there were indeed some doctors, who no doubt as usual (on their well-meaning way) killed large numbers of people who, if left alone, might well have recovered naturally. Not everyone who got the plague died ..
It does not matter how long the outbreak continues, because "it is what it is". We think you are drawing the wrong conclusion from the available data. The vast bulk of the population will be only marginally affected, thus the panic measures causing economic disruption are not justified by the actual situation. Few people will become seriously ill to the point where they require hospitalization; many fewer will die, and those are already likely to be circling the plughole ....
Why put the onus on the "young" ? Those under 65 are at low risk even of developing symptoms. This group constitutes the greater bulk of the economically productive population. Those at risk are already retired, elderly, and frail - apart from young people with existing serious cardiopulmonary problems, a relatively small proportion of the workforce.-- 8th of 7, Mar 18 2020 Do you have a "basic inhumanity" option ?
// build out for expanding need //
In the current situation, that means tents. Maybe portakabins ... but, in reality, tents.
Hospitals take years to plan and build; this will be over in a matter of weeks, another Millennium Bug Oh-My-God-We' re-All-Going-To-Die panic, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It may be that it's the ones already in hospital who get wheeled out and put in the tents while the acute virus cases luxuriate indoors - but by the time you're breaking ground on a hospital building, you'd be better off laying out a new graveyard.... it will all be over.
And now a word from your programme sponsor ... <link>-- 8th of 7, Mar 18 2020 We don't dispute the steady growth, given the ageing population profile. The problem is transients.
If you have one million fifty-year-olds in your nation today, actuaries will be able to tell you (allowing for immigration, emigration, falling off ladders, heart attacks and bizarre, tragic yet hilarious incidents involving orbital sanders) that in ten years time you will have 925,000 +/- 6700 sixty-year-olds, and so on and so on. Thus in thirty years, you'll have maybe 600,000 octogenarians, and the proportion needing hospital care each year is deterministic.
Enter, stage right, a novel pathogen. For dramatic reasons, it's dressed in a sinister black cloak and a carnival mask, and wearing a crown.
<Shouts offstage/>
"DOC ! DOC ! C'MON, GET YOUR PLAGUE DOCTOR MASK, THIS IS YOUR BIG SCENE !"
The Villain, accompanied by boos and hisses from the audience, picks out victims and makes them suddenly and unexpectedly ill.
You thought you knew how many hospital beds you needed to add in this Five Year Plan. Turns out you were wrong. Now, you need ... lots. But only for six months.
Unused space costs money, and deteriorates. Bad economics.-- 8th of 7, Mar 18 2020 I'm talking about the air and sea lockup. I'm talking about trains and trucks. I'm talking about food and medicine. A continued and lengthy closure can be worse than the pandemic itself. If small isolated cooperating communities of healthy people are able to sustain themselves and coordinate two things: 1. Clear of the virus. 2. Preparation to run all levels of the country - we could all be thankful.-- pashute, Mar 31 2020 Why worry about the virus at all ? It's less dangerous than regular influenza. If you're under 60 and in average health you have very little to fear.
Only high-risk individuals with pre-existing conditions are in danger. Their numbers are comparatively small.-- 8th of 7, Mar 31 2020 random, halfbakery