It said the fraction would be a bit lower for the US because local outbreaks could be dealt with by state-level lockdowns, but I didn’t see a hard number. Still, intermittent lockdowns for 18 months seems much more achievable than a continuous lockdown. The Hammer article is definitely more optimistic than the Imperial paper, though it still doesn’t quite imply “return to normal”.
Since “do nothing” is not a real option, what will actually happen in the US (I’m moderately confident) is some degree of lockdown for several weeks to several months depending on how effective it is. The sooner we start it the better it will work. After that we will either: 1) give up, if the lockdown was ineffective and a large fraction of the country is infected (this is “flattening”), or 2) if the lockdown succeeded in reducing the number of cases substantially, we’ll move into a period of intermittent and possibly localized lockdowns interspersed with trying to test and contact trace. The fraction of time we spend in intermittent lockdowns will depend on how effective the testing and tracing is.
It said the fraction would be a bit lower for the US because local outbreaks could be dealt with by state-level lockdowns, but I didn’t see a hard number. Still, intermittent lockdowns for 18 months seems much more achievable than a continuous lockdown. The Hammer article is definitely more optimistic than the Imperial paper, though it still doesn’t quite imply “return to normal”.
Since “do nothing” is not a real option, what will actually happen in the US (I’m moderately confident) is some degree of lockdown for several weeks to several months depending on how effective it is. The sooner we start it the better it will work. After that we will either: 1) give up, if the lockdown was ineffective and a large fraction of the country is infected (this is “flattening”), or 2) if the lockdown succeeded in reducing the number of cases substantially, we’ll move into a period of intermittent and possibly localized lockdowns interspersed with trying to test and contact trace. The fraction of time we spend in intermittent lockdowns will depend on how effective the testing and tracing is.