10-4: How to Reopen the Economy by Exploiting the Coronavirus's Weak Spot

[brooklynite]

New York Times

If we cannot resume economic activity without causing a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, we face a grim, unpredictable future of opening and closing schools and businesses.

We can find a way out of this dilemma by exploiting a key property of the virus: its latent period — the three-day delay on average between the time a person is infected and the time he or she can infect others.

People can work in two-week cycles, on the job for four days then, by the time they might become infectious, 10 days at home in lockdown. The strategy works even better when the population is split into two groups of households working alternating weeks.

Austrian school officials will adopt a simple version — with two groups of students attending school for five days every two weeks — starting May 18.

[ProfessorGAC]

1. It's An Interesting Approach

Probably worth trying. We can't keep everything down forever.
Calculating and mitigating risk seems wise.

[Hugin]

2. I don't think this is going to fly in the US.

We can barely get people to wash their hands once a day and wear a mask without them going all AK-47.

Then, there's the haircuts.

[JI7]

4. It can be done within states . Especially the states that have joined to cooperate

and coordinate efforts to fight this since we have nothing at the national level that is trying to do it.

[uponit7771]

5. "without them going all AK-47.", +1 ... we need to call the police on potential loaded PGR

[Voltaire2]

7. well once again we can see we are in the process of dividing into two distinctly separate

societies within one nation.

So the idiocracy/jesusland people can all not wash their fucking hands after they shit, or whatever it is their freedumbs and their looney-toon gods demand of them.

The sane people can do sane things as best they can, avoiding the gun humping nazis for jesus as much as possible.

[Hugin]

11. Personally, my #1 lesson learned from COVID-19, which I doubt is going to help me during my lifetime

Last edited Mon May 11, 2020, 10:11 AM - Edit history (1)

But, I'll put out there for potential use by some future sciency civilization.

"Don't get trapped in a pandemic within a nation that has whistled past an elementary school mass shooting."

This replaces, "Cardio" as #1... BTW.

[MissB]

17. It may be a way forward for universities

They may have to adopt something like that for the fall term.

[Hugin]

19. Honestly, from most of the college aged people I've interacted with recently...

Very few of them physically attend classes these days, anyway.

Most of the lectures and assignments are available online. So, the transition to full virtual is a short step away.

The biggest problems with the university setting are the dormitory living and, of course, athletics.

[MissB]

20. I have two in college

(One grad school, one senior in college)

It is hard to duplicate hands on classes though. I have two engineering students; labs and group projects just stopped for spring term.

Nursing students, for example, really need to be hands on.

My youngest kid’s university is talking about how classrooms will be set up for fall, including putting small classes in larger rooms, rotating very large classes through a combo of some students in class and some virtual so all get to be in class at some point (which frankly sounds a lot like the article’s suggestion) and prescribed entrance/exit procedures.

It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with dorms. It’s going to be tough.

[Hugin]

23. I'm a strong believer in the value of labs and group projects...

Because, those are the settings where students learn to think, gain experience, and cooperatively solve problems.

Not sure how to solve that quandary.

However, the communal living and mass socializing situation is a larger and important life issue that society needs to work through.

[csziggy]

24. It's hard to do labs online

A girl I know is in Pre-Med. She had two lab classes for this summer and a biochemistry class. She can't do the labs virtually and she really needs her study group to get through biochem. So, instead of getting the classes this summer, she got a job involving her other interest - horses.

I think it will be good for her. She's been going to college year round since she started. Going into her final year, having a summer off will good for her, especially if she gets into med school afterwards.

[uponit7771]

3. Why all the bullshit alternatives?! Just start a federated TTQ with 1hr turnaround? Why these ...

... relative Rube Goldberg machines when it comes to getting Americans feeling safe.

[genxlib]

6. ???? What is a TTQ?

[uponit7771]

10. Test, trace, quarantine

[genxlib]

12. Got it

I certainly agree but I don't think that it is feasible at the current rate of infection even if we were prepared (which we aren't). It's just too many people infected with exponential touch points for each one.

One of the major purposes of staying in lock down longer is to lower the case load to a point where individual cases can be traced.

[intheflow]

14. DU: Come for the news, stay to learn new acronyms.

...and thanks. I'd never heard that one before.

[Voltaire2]

15. three months in and we still aren't doing the basics.

it is mind boggling. decades of epidemic best practices ignored.

[uponit7771]

16. THIS !!! 👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽

[MissB]

18. The article notes that it would be used in conjunction

With testing and tracing. It also notes that in the US, widespread testing and tracing is not available and that in many countries there will never be the capability for testing/tracing.

It isn’t a US centric article.

[uponit7771]

22. Trump, "... too much testing will make us look bad" (link) We don't have widespread testing because

... Trump doesn't want it not that its not available to have quickly.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-says-too-much-coronavirus-testing-makes-us-look-bad-2020-5

"So the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn't have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad," Trump said during a meeting with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

I don't agree with the article that'll no country can test or trace, that doesn't make sense.

[Chainfire]

8. too many flaws, false sense of security

Someone on their "off" period is infected three days before the end of their returning to work. They go back to work and infect everyone around them.

If lockdowns were enforced and effective, we would not have a million infected Americans today.

[SKKY]

9. I'm not sure it would work at the macro level...

...but it could most definitely work if individual businesses took a look at it. And in looking at some of the comments, I don't get the reluctance to try something. We can't stay in lock-down forever. If this is something that will help us get to a treatment, or a a vaccine, with as few deaths as possible, why not look at it? What do we have to lose?

[quaint]

13. Can't asymptomatic and presymptomatic people infect others?

Maybe they aren't certain.

[Demsrule86]

21. Just another version of kill Americans for money.