but if there is no vaccine then won't opening up everything literally be restarting those graphs?
Opening up will increase the infection rate again. But there are a couple problems:
The first mayor problem is that there is no way to eradicate the virus completely, independent of how long you keep a society on lock-down. It will eventually crawl back in, this is a world wide pandemic after all and we need to find a way to hold out till a vaccine or a very good treatment is found. The second mayor problem is: No state, no region, no country is able to survive a 12-15 months long lock-down till a vaccine arrives. Both problems combined form an incredible dilemma imo.
The plan in Germany to deal with this is to slightly modify the current Strategy in South Korea:
Step 1: Long Lock-down to bring down the infection rate below 1 and to build up necessary systems like testing facilities, respiratory stations, train people in contact tracing, start and invest into research, start bringing back certain health care related productions back from asia etc.
Step 2: Controlled and slow opening in phases. Be ready to role back and restart again. Make sure that there are new hygienic plans like distancing rules in shops, requirement to wear mask (announced in some states today), hygienic stations, costumer limits etc.
Other things can not be allowed though, like concerts, sport events, other large scale events (e.g. the german oktoberfest was canceled)
Step 3: Contact Tracing and wide Tests: Everybody who gets infected needs to be tested, put into private quarantine and every social contact needs to be traced, also isolated and tested. This has to be done thoroughly, no mistakes allowed.
This should have a similar effect like a wide lock-down, theoretically. You immediately cut off the infected from society and take the virus the ability to spread indefinitely.
Step 4: Wide Anti Body tests to find those who were infected without symptoms (problematic to find and to isolate, potential super spreaders and also a reason why the virus can not be eradicated). Immune people will get a free pass and are allowed to live a normal life again. Visit cinemas, restaurants etc.
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Most people should be able to get through without getting the infection that way, but it is not the most optimal solution, as people will still get infected and some will unfortunately die. But it should allow for everybody to get the best treatment possible, without the need of a triage scenario.
At least that's the plan. Nobody knows what to do if it doesn't work tbh. Also nobody knows if it is really possible. We aren't talking about a couple more weeks here. We are talking about another year, at least.
To give you an idea how challenging this is: Germany has just ~83 million people and we'll need ~600k tests per week to make sure to catch every infected. Not because there will be 600k new infections per week (hopefully), but because everybody who had contact with an infected will need to be found and also tested (several times). We are currently at ~300k/week and in-country mask and disinfectant production has started but is still not where it needs to be.
600k is without sporting events btw. A single soccer match with ~70k fans in the stadium, who have families, co. workers and other social contacts would immediately overburden our testing capacities. Everybody in close proximity needs to be tested, after all.
Even shopping miles are a big problem! The best hope is that enough people willingly install a tracing app that uses Bluetooth to safe other smartphones in near proximity. This way you can send an anonymous warning, if you get infected and people who were close to you can get in touch with the health systems to get tested themselves.
The plan for the original tracing app was way more intrusive btw, but people were not happy with the government collection and saving data on servers. Understandably.
Also a lot more challenges and ideas that we are talking about.
But this is already too long and to make a long story short: Opening could be possible (not completely though), but it needs a lot of meticulous work and planning. Blindly opening is a no-go and will result in an increased death toll, which is not acceptable. But this strategy should be easily apply-able in the U.S. and Europe.
Other regions of the world? Especially third world countries? Nobody has come up with a good idea yet. It's a f* disaster in the making. It's depressing as fuck.
Instead of NATO or a UN rapid reaction force, we rather need a medical nato or something else with huge resources to help in regions that can not help themselves!