Quote from: 20kevin20 on March 18, 2020, 01:34:14 AM

I've spent more than 4 weeks completely self-isolated at home trying to prevent a pandemic. Unfortunately though, many have shown too much ignorance and this lead to Italy and China having to go through the worst.

My mind has predominantly been occupied in the past few weeks with analyzing all the possible strategies there are to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm constantly trying to find a solution that would work best and would provide the least damage. Time is our enemy as of now though, so any solution must be applied immediately or the situation could get even worse.

As far as I'm concerned, any strategy has an unavoidable sacrifice. Be it lives, economy or something else, there is a sacrifice to be made.

I've seen countries take different paths toward the virus containment. Let's analyze the existing strategies.

1. Do nothing and let the virus spread hoping for herd immunity to happen. We've heard this in The Netherlands and in the UK (which is now apparently backing out of the plan) and in my opinion, this is the worst path you can go for. This strategy is great for the economy, but will come with an insane number of sacrificed human beings. Letting everything be means the virus will spread like wildfire and the hospitals will more than likely become overcrowded. COVID-19 cases will then become the prioritized cases in the hospitals, which means all the other causes of death will have a surge. In other words, this sounds more like a "we don't care about our citizens, all we want is our economy to thrive" plan. The thing is, this strategy could go very wrong: if at some point everything gets out of control and the hospitals are literally unable to keep up with the infected, the authorities will most likely go for a quarantine which means taking down the economy after sacrificing a significant number of lives. Moreover, there is literally no evidence AFAIK about herd immunity so chances are things will get out of control anyway and this will be basically repeating the 1918 Spanish Flu all over. If this strategy is applied and the number of infections needing hospitalization surges, an entire chain of problems pops up: If you have enough ventillators, you don't have enough space in the hospitals. If you have enough space, you don't have the personnel. If you have the personnel, you don't have unlimited resources to keep up with all the pacients. And so on.

2. Slowly take measures the more COVID-19 spreads in the country. This one is basically trying to keep the economy up as much as possible while also keeping the cases under a somewhat control. Italy, Spain, France and China have shown very well that this is a bad strategy because there will be a point where you just won't be able to keep up with the cases anymore and so you'll need to lock down your entire country. I usually compare this to the Bitcoin halving: the number of confirmed cases is growing at a pretty fast pace, so measures against the virus are implemented every now and then to slow down the growth of this pandemic. Is it worth it though? The virus is being spread at a somewhat slower pace, but hospital overcrowding still does happen. I believe this is not a good strategy either. You try keeping everything under control but there is going to be a point where things get out of control anyway. Therefore, this strategy will end with both human lives and the economy sacrificed.

3. Take strict measures against the virus, close everything and lock down the country ASAP. There is no country that has locked itself down immediately after the first cases AFAIK, but this "lockdown" countermeasure has been taken in various countries and we've seen the effects. As soon as a lockdown happens, the economies go into a literal freefall of double-digit one-day stock losses. This is a measure to strictly try containing the virus but you have to sacrifice the economy. I believe this would've been the best strategy out of all 3 and would have worked very smoothly if governments would have psychologically prepared their citizens in time to avoid hysteria. If we all knew there is going to be a lockdown BUT food and drugs will still be in shops, there would've been way less panic than trying to chill everyone down for weeks and then announcing a very strict measure (locking down your entire country). Although the economy is sacrificed, I think it's more worth it than sacrificing human lives.

Now let me share with you a few strategies I've thought of. I'm posting this entire thread here hoping that maybe there is a genius mind out there who has a better solution to the pandemic than all of us. My strategies have their own flaws too. Here they are:

1. Split the population into two (by age) and apply two different strategies for each part. The population would be split into people <45 and people >45. People under 45 living by themselves should be let to work under normal conditions and continue their lives. Everyone else over 45 will stay under quarantine at home together with everyone they live in the same house with. If someone under 45 has underlying conditions known to lead to severe symptoms of COVID-19, they will be quarantined at home too.

I found the following flaws in this strategy:
- How will we monitor everyone who will have to be quarantined at home?
- If everyone under 45 is going to continue their lives, the chances of those >45 to get infected will surge significantly.

2. Herd immunity: infect everyone, in waves of dozens/hundreds of thousands of people every week. There are a lot of asymptomatic cases that have not been confirmed yet. If the youth has a much smaller chance of having severe symptoms, this means there is probably already a significant percentage of youth carrying COVID-19. If we infect everyone in waves (descending by age), then the older (which is also more prone to the severe symptoms) will be under control. If we gradually infect in weekly waves, we could have a pretty good idea (thanks to the existing statistics from Italy and China, although I don't trust the Chinese ones that much) how many ICUs will be needed so things could remain under control continuously. Once everyone over 45 will be infected and things are under control, the quarantine could be lifted because way less of the youth will need hospitalization.

I found the following flaws in this strategy:
- According to Worldometers, the death rate for those over 80 years old is 14.8%. Say all deaths from severe cases of +80yo confirmed cases have had ICUs (which is the ideal condition). How will we cope with the death rate in this case? Starting with the death rate of 14.8% and purposely infecting everyone in waves starting from descending ages, this means we're going to expect a 14.8%.. or 1.88M deaths in the US (source: calculating 14.8% of the people over 80yo in the US based on the numbers from Statista).
- This will take an awful lot of time to infect everyone in waves. However, instead of applying the "let everything be" strategy, this one at least tries to surpress the number of severe cases so hospitals could be under control at the same time. Moreover, the quarantine time could be reduced by weeks or even months, which is very critical.
- Again, AFAIK there is no known case of herd immunity. Some of the older cases have been reinfected. What if a second wave of the virus or a stronger strain hits and the death rate surges significantly?

I'm trying to come up with a solution to the critical situation the entire world is into right now. I know my strats aren't the best, but it's the only solution I can think of. If anyone has a better strategy, please leave it here. I'll make sure to read all your thoughts very clearly. I'm looking for a way to both sacrifice the least of everything and stop the crisis in a reasonable time.

In addition to what you said above.
Maintain a high level of hygiene
Boosting the immune system regularly
Constant medical examination
And strict rules on social gatherings.