Is Quarantine Going to Happen Again
The Scariest Pandemic Timeline
If the flu and coronavirus hit at the same time this fall, America might have a longer, more severe lockdown.
If yous held out a glimmer of hope about life returning to normal this year, that promise may have been thoroughly extinguished this week past the director of the Centers for Affliction Command and Prevention, Robert Redfield.
"At that place's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation adjacent winter will actually be even more difficult than the i we just went through," Redfield told The Washington Post on Tuesday. "We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time."
President Trump afterwards tried to claim that Redfield had been misquoted, merely Redfield antiseptic that he was quoted accurately. He'due south besides far from the only person who believes that the United States is in for a bleak winter. Numerous public-health experts are concerned that COVID-19 might make a improvement this fall (assuming that total case numbers even driblet to begin with). In combination with the normal, Oct-through-March influenza season, the disease could strain hospital capacity even more than information technology did this bound, when flu season was petering out. "It'south going to be a very difficult fall and winter this year coming up," says Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Plant.
Scientists don't yet know if the coronavirus volition fade away during the summer before making a resurgence in colder temperatures. Some other respiratory illnesses do this: During the 2009 swine-influenza outbreak, cases surged in the spring, subsided over the summer, then returned with a vengeance in the autumn. But the new coronavirus strain's beliefs is still as well mysterious to predict for certain. Experts expect the virus to circulate amid humans for some time, but its particular ebbs and flows aren't even so known.
A late-in-the-twelvemonth rebound would be a problem because influenza flavour already puts hospitals close to capacity, experts told me. Though fewer people hospitalized for the influenza would crave ventilators than COVID-xix patients likely would, flu patients might need precious intensive-intendance-unit space. Already during this outbreak, reports from hospitals read like dispatches from a war zone. One 49-year-quondam COVID-19 patient was institute "blue and dead" in an emergency-room chair while waiting for an inpatient bed. Doctors' groups debated whether younger patients should have preferential access to ventilators. Having to contend with another circular of COVID-19 patients while likewise taking on astringent flu cases might cause hospitals to quickly run out of ventilators, beds, or even doctors.
Some people might even get infected with both the flu and COVID-nineteen at the same fourth dimension. While health experts don't know exactly how that would make COVID-xix worse, "I tin't imagine that would exist good," Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Heart for Health Security, said.
Even as the seasonal influenza reenters the moving picture, Americans likely won't have adult herd immunity to COVID-19, and a vaccine is probable nonetheless more than a yr abroad. The absolute safest thing to do would be for all Americans to lock themselves within until there'southward a coronavirus vaccine. However, even die-difficult public-health cheerleaders say that's simply not feasible. Millions of people accept lost their jobs; non-COVID-nineteen medical treatments are being postponed; children are suffering from a lack of schooling and socialization.
Instead, health experts broadly agree that the best path frontward will be an aggressive testing and contact-tracing regimen. It might non exist possible to get asymptomatic people tested regularly. However, the rapid testing of anyone who has possible COVID-nineteen symptoms, along with a mode to track and isolate anyone they've been in contact with, could proceed coronavirus infections from spreading as the flu simultaneously rips through the population. While America'southward testing capabilities have been increasing, we are currently not testing or contact-tracing at anywhere near the necessary level, experts say.
There are other ways to prepare for a big fall surge in flu and COVID-xix infections. Government and infirmary officials could use the intervening time to staff upward hospitals and increase their capacity. Large sporting events and concerts may demand to be postponed until there'southward more than immunity in the population, Nuzzo and others say. Jha says universities should cancel sports and extracurriculars, give every student a unmarried dorm, and stagger dining times. Vulnerable people—like the elderly or those with chronic illnesses—may take to stay dwelling house longer than others. Everyone could vesture masks even after they're no longer required to, and work from home if they're able to.
In add-on to mitigating coronavirus transmission, these types of mild social-distancing measures might aid reduce the spread of the flu. "Some of these things will hopefully work their fashion into our more normal, twenty-four hours-to-solar day lives, and we'll be able to do 'social distancing lite' in a way that will help usa reduce the manual," Stephen Kissler, an infectious-disease modeler at Harvard, told me.
Jha is hopeful that between now and this fall, biotech companies will accept adult drugs that can lessen COVID-19 symptoms. Though these might not be "cures" per se, they might reduce the amount of fourth dimension COVID-19 patients are in the hospital and thus ease the strain on the wellness-care system. If these measures don't happen, Americans might see additional lockdowns. "If we don't become our act together, the chances that there volition be another lockdown in the fall, and that it will be a long 1, are very, very loftier," Jha said.
To be certain, even if no one takes unnecessary risks, and therapeutics are available, and the hospitals are well stocked, and paw-washing becomes a religion, there still might need to exist a autumn lockdown. This is, unfortunately, the new dubiousness with which nosotros all now live.
If y'all are desperate to cling to some modicum of control, the number-one way everyday Americans can help to foreclose this flu-COVID-xix Armageddon is by getting the influenza shot. Employers could even brand returning to piece of work in the autumn contingent on beingness vaccinated confronting the flu, Nuzzo said. The flu shot is 1 of the few things that are within our ability, and information technology doesn't rely on the vicissitudes of pathogens. There aren't many opportunities to feel empowered these days. We might want to seize the ones we get.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/could-there-be-another-coronavirus-quarantine/610630/
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