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Ask HN: How long do you think the quarantine measures will last per country?

16 points by shadowprofile77 ↗ HN
As many of the countries steadily more affected by the COVID pandemic enact social distancing and quarantine measures, there have been varied claims about how long these will last. I've heard estimates ranging from a couple weeks to months.

What this makes me ask is: first, for those of you who comment here and can make a better educated guess than some others, what strikes you as a plausible scenario in the following weeks? Secondly, how can they be on the shorter end of that if the virus is still active and still without a vaccine or treatment. As soon as quarantines get ignored or lifted again, wouldn't new infections simply retake their previous surge, causing new saturations?

18 comments

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kozak
Year to year and a half, until vaccine arrives?
anigbrowl
I think there will be disruption through at least the end of the year. The second-order effects mean we'll still be dealing with aftermath for at least 5 years. It won't be going back to normal. On the upside, a decrease in pollution. On the downside, that probably means next winter will be unusually cold by recent standards.
DanBC
Measures will be in place until at least August.
zzo38computer
Some people told me from two to eight weeks, but I don't know. I live in British Columbia, so would want to know what to do in British Columbia.
mathdev
Took Hubei nearly two months with a complete shutdown. The West cannot do anything remotely close to a complete shutdown due to different social order and there being multiple loci of infection. Therefore, the measures will be exponentially less effective. So the lockdown will be indefinite - multiple years at least.

Unless we let a small number of old people die of natural causes, we are basically switching to a totalitarian system.

adventured
> So the lockdown will be indefinite - multiple years at least.

The lockdown can't last indefinitely. The US and EU will largely collapse, literally, in that approach before a year is out. This will become very apparent within a very short amount of time. The US and EU will go bankrupt trying to maintain lockdown mode.

The West will do the exact opposite. Before a few months are up, the lockdowns will end no matter what the circumstances are. The US and EU will switch to lockdown / quarantine for only those most vulnerable.

It's far cheaper, and a lot more sane, to handle the ICU cases than to spend $1 trillion every month on keeping the US or EU economies on life support. We'll invert the context: everyone on lockdown at enormous total cost to protect the most vulnerable, switched to a small percentage of the population on lockdown / quaratine at a far smaller cost.

The virus is likely extremely widespread. The US probably has a million cases of the virus already. China probably has had several million cases of it.

There is in fact no other possible scenario than to end the lockdowns, it will not really be a choice, it will have to occur. Neither the US nor the EU can sustain in perpetual lockdown mode, for obvious reasons related to food, supplies, production.

What are countries like Spain going to do, run $200 billion financial programs every other month? Of course not. It's obvious what the choice will be at this point.

Herd immunity is already underway, due to the extreme number of undetected cases. If any of the larger nations were really on top of this mess, they'd be doing massive randomized testing to confirm the hyper spread of the virus. Once that is confirmed, the only logical choice is to do what I've outlined. Each day that goes by, it will become more apparent that the virus has already hyper spread. Eventually that will be confirmed, right now it just appears they're going to get to that point unnecessarily slowly.

shadowprofile77
With this you're saying, in effect, that the virus then has a much lower mortality rate than currently indicated by most of the CFR numbers in the more heavily affected countries? Not necessarily doubting your claim, it has plausibility at this point, i'm just curious. And if it is the case, then places like Italy must have an enormous number of undocumented cases to justify their current death counts.
CM30
Depends on the country and what they're doing right now, as well as how far the situation has come there. I think it's probably going to peak in places like Italy soon enough, likely within the next month or two. In places where it hasn't peaked yet or not much was done to contain it (like the US), I can see it lasting about twice that time, maybe three times as long.

Either way, it'll likely be about July/August before things have started to calm down worldwide, and a bit later before things have completely returned to normal.

keiferski
Zero chance that this full lockdown goes on for more than a month or two at the most. The economies of the US and EU would be entirely destroyed and we'd be in the Second Great Depression.

We're likely looking at a slow rollback of the quarantine over the next six months. Expect a dramatic increase in medical personnel and supplies, temperature testing in public, especially for entry to structures like malls and subway stations, continued quarantine of at-risk populations, postponement of large gatherings, and a rollout of experimental vaccines and treatments.

For the "second wave" in Fall/Winter, the plan will be to have massive medical resources ready to handle a surge incoming cases. After the current economic situation, I wouldn't expect another shut-down.

krueger71
As individuals we need some reliable way to know if we are immune and not contagious. We probably also need some way to prove this to others. People who have this status should be able to operate normally together with others and keep things running during a long lock-down. It wouldn't make sense to keep people locked inside if they can't catch or transmit the disease.
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redhale
This [1] was the most sobering article I've read on this question. I really hope it is too pessimistic.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615370/coronavirus-pandem...

keiferski
The problem with analyses like this is that they don’t factor in human psychology, whatsoever. Keeping people locked in their houses for 18 months isn’t going to happen. Trying to force it will result in economic and social unrest that dwarfs virus deaths.
AnimalMuppet
Related question: In the US, are we going to see domestic travel restrictions? If so, how soon? And for how long?
davchana
At least in India, Punjab, they have quarantined each county, limiting every non essential travel.
nicholas73
The bare minimum we can do is quarantine for a month until warmer weather arrives. Then we can see if that has an effect.