SawMaster
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New York City shows us what happens if you don't have a lockdown when it hits a densely populated area and you don't have any immunity.
This will be one of the most vivid lessons to be learned from this pandemic when history looks back from the future. I imagine that Wuhan probably has a nearly equal population density (at least at it's center) so that can be compared as what happens with a widespread infection ahead of a strict lockdow (which is seemingly quite effective given the bad situation they had, but requires a longer duration). There are other densely populated places like Singapore and some towns in New Zealand where the lockdowns were instituted early to look at as well; those were also quite effective in achieving their desired goal. And for now it seems that the earlier the lockdown is implemented, the shorter it's duration needs to be to maintain it's effectiveness. But NYC had neither an early nor an effective lockdown, and the results have been bad and are continuing to be bad with no ending in sight.
So far it's clear that diseases like this can be limited if not completely controlled by lockdowns, and from there you can choose any of the courses to go forward with. What cannot be done is to have all your choices open (or any choices left at all) when something like this becomes pervasive and widespread before control measures are attempted. It's a very simple logic which I've been espousing from the very beginning of this. And since you cannot otherwise know the rate of infection, widespread testing has to go along with the lockdowns at least to the degree it takes to be relatively certain that you're not leaving out a person or group who will go out and infect others after the lockdown is lifted. We have no effective control methods at this time except exclusions and lockdowns so whatever other effects they bring must simply be accepted. The only other viable option is to do nothing, in which case deaths and permanent disabilities will be the highest rates possible along with the economic hardships that brings.
What happens after lockdowns is another thing altogether, and again will be learned well in time. We're going to have many diffgerent examples to study but somehow I just don't think that there will emerge any better solutions than early strict lockdowns when the end numbers are counted.