This makes me wish we could do experiments with alternate lockdown strategies, like: Instead of having things open at 1/4th capacity, we have them open at 100% capacity and every few weeks they’re all closed for a week.
This wouldn’t work perfectly and you’d inevitably miss people every time, but “everyone gets a week off every 6 weeks” seems way easier to get buy-in for than everything being mostly closed endlessly.
It would be better for parents, since they would be off of work the same week their kids don’t have school, and it would be predictable.
It would be better for businesses, since demand would move the week before and after the scheduled lockdown.
It’s unclear if it would work well enough, since you might just end up with huge cycles of infection rates dropping for a week and then jumping all the way back up as everyone starts singing at bars the week after, but it seems worth a try.
Taking 9 days (Saturday—following Sunday) off from all out-of-house activities every other month would let the exponential growth re-set from thousands back to dozens.
A ban on large gatherings (20+ people) all the time (entertainment events, full capacity meat processing, church, etc.)
Compensating employers for the forced time off
Extended and enhanced unemployment benefits, since there won’t be much hiring.
Whatever mask/sanitization/mosquito killing makes sense for the transmission mechanism.
Yeah, I was thinking about a similar thing. (My version was 2 weeks off every 2 months; plus contact tracing; plus ban on gatherings of over hundred people.) With the schedule known months in advance, people could at least plan their lives. If you can’t do something right now, but you know you will be able to do it 2 weeks later, it’s usually not a big problem.
This makes me wish we could do experiments with alternate lockdown strategies, like: Instead of having things open at 1/4th capacity, we have them open at 100% capacity and every few weeks they’re all closed for a week.
This wouldn’t work perfectly and you’d inevitably miss people every time, but “everyone gets a week off every 6 weeks” seems way easier to get buy-in for than everything being mostly closed endlessly.
It would be better for parents, since they would be off of work the same week their kids don’t have school, and it would be predictable.
It would be better for businesses, since demand would move the week before and after the scheduled lockdown.
It’s unclear if it would work well enough, since you might just end up with huge cycles of infection rates dropping for a week and then jumping all the way back up as everyone starts singing at bars the week after, but it seems worth a try.
I think this is the best proto-plan.
Taking 9 days (Saturday—following Sunday) off from all out-of-house activities every other month would let the exponential growth re-set from thousands back to dozens.
A ban on large gatherings (20+ people) all the time (entertainment events, full capacity meat processing, church, etc.)
Compensating employers for the forced time off
Extended and enhanced unemployment benefits, since there won’t be much hiring.
Whatever mask/sanitization/mosquito killing makes sense for the transmission mechanism.
Yeah, I was thinking about a similar thing. (My version was 2 weeks off every 2 months; plus contact tracing; plus ban on gatherings of over hundred people.) With the schedule known months in advance, people could at least plan their lives. If you can’t do something right now, but you know you will be able to do it 2 weeks later, it’s usually not a big problem.