I am an MIT-trained physicist and complexity scientist who studies pandemics. I have warned about global pandemics due to increasing travel for 15 years. I recommended community based monitoring of symptoms to stop Ebola in West Africa in 2014, and it worked. The fastest and even the only way to contain COVID-19 in the United States is a five-week national lockdown. Closing schools, bars and movie theaters are good measures, but not enough. Our relaxed approach to social distancing is insufficient to stop the exponential growth of COVID-19. Until Americans consistently adopt strong social distancing recommendations — a lockdown — the disease will continue to spread exponentially. During a five-week national lockdown, federal, state and local authorities would ensure that all Americans stay home except to obtain food and other essentials, access medical care, or do work essential to the functioning of society. Travel would cease: We would close our borders and airports and prohibit all unnecessary travel across state and county (or town) lines within the United States. The U.S. government would have to provide aid to citizens separated from their sources of income and ensure care for vulnerable members of society. Lockdown would sharply reduce cases During the first two weeks of a lockdown, infected individuals will either recover from mild cases of COVID-19 at home or seek medical attention for the 14% of cases that are severe. During the third, fourth and fifth weeks, any newly infected family or cohabitants of infected individuals will recover or seek medical attention and their isolation will prevent further spreading. By the end of the lockdown, the number of infections will be a small fraction of what they are now. Don't panic: The lockdown will give us time to dramatically scale up our supply of COVID-19 test kits and capacity to process them. If we reduce the number of infections using the lockdown and start a massive testing regime in the United States, we can control COVID-19 after five weeks without such extreme social distancing measures. Isolating sick individuals and their immediate contacts will be enough. The human and economic costs of delaying this lockdown will be staggering. The COVID-19 outbreak has many more cases now than are visible (tip of the iceberg) and they are growing rapidly. Absent sufficiently effective intervention, new cases will increase 1.3 to 1.5 times each day. We had almost 20,000 cases in the United States on Friday, over 5,800 more cases than the previous day. Without a lockdown, in one week there will be about 200,000. In two weeks: 2,000,000. One in seven cases require hospitalization and 5% require ICU care with ventilators to survive. There aren’t nearly enough ventilators available. We can buy time: The effectiveness of a five-week lockdown will be dramatic — and also entirely predictable. We know a U.S. lockdown can work because it worked in China. At the height of its COVID-19 crisis in mid-February, China had locked down an estimated 760 milllion people, approximately half of its population. This policy was so successful that Wuhan is now much safer from coronavirus than New York City or Washington, D.C. The few new COVID-19 cases in China now stem from foreign travelers rather than local transmission, and all are safely quarantined. We know what we have to do. President Donald Trump and our states' governors and local leaders must act now to save millions of lives. Yaneer Bar-Yam is the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, where he is an expert on pandemics and other complex systems. He is spearheading the effort of over 3,000 volunteers working to stop the outbreak at endcoronavirus.org. Follow him on Twitter: @yaneerbaryam
We need an immediate five-week national lockdown to defeat coronavirus in America
Locking down the country would reduce infections and allow time for massive testing. There will be staggering human and economic costs if we delay.
Yaneer Bar-Yam
I am an MIT-trained physicist and complexity scientist who studies pandemics. I have warned about global pandemics due to increasing travel for 15 years. I recommended community based monitoring of symptoms to stop Ebola in West Africa in 2014, and it worked. The fastest and even the only way to contain COVID-19 in the United States is a five-week national lockdown.
Closing schools, bars and movie theaters are good measures, but not enough. Our relaxed approach to social distancing is insufficient to stop the exponential growth of COVID-19. Until Americans consistently adopt strong social distancing recommendations — a lockdown — the disease will continue to spread exponentially.
During a five-week national lockdown, federal, state and local authorities would ensure that all Americans stay home except to obtain food and other essentials, access medical care, or do work essential to the functioning of society. Travel would cease: We would close our borders and airports and prohibit all unnecessary travel across state and county (or town) lines within the United States. The U.S. government would have to provide aid to citizens separated from their sources of income and ensure care for vulnerable members of society.
Lockdown would sharply reduce cases
During the first two weeks of a lockdown, infected individuals will either recover from mild cases of COVID-19 at home or seek medical attention for the 14% of cases that are severe. During the third, fourth and fifth weeks, any newly infected family or cohabitants of infected individuals will recover or seek medical attention and their isolation will prevent further spreading. By the end of the lockdown, the number of infections will be a small fraction of what they are now.
Don't panic: The lockdown will give us time to dramatically scale up our supply of COVID-19 test kits and capacity to process them. If we reduce the number of infections using the lockdown and start a massive testing regime in the United States, we can control COVID-19 after five weeks without such extreme social distancing measures. Isolating sick individuals and their immediate contacts will be enough.
The human and economic costs of delaying this lockdown will be staggering. The COVID-19 outbreak has many more cases now than are visible (tip of the iceberg) and they are growing rapidly. Absent sufficiently effective intervention, new cases will increase 1.3 to 1.5 times each day. We had almost 20,000 cases in the United States on Friday, over 5,800 more cases than the previous day. Without a lockdown, in one week there will be about 200,000. In two weeks: 2,000,000. One in seven cases require hospitalization and 5% require ICU care with ventilators to survive. There aren’t nearly enough ventilators available.
We can buy time: The effectiveness of a five-week lockdown will be dramatic — and also entirely predictable.
We know a U.S. lockdown can work because it worked in China. At the height of its COVID-19 crisis in mid-February, China had locked down an estimated 760 milllion people, approximately half of its population. This policy was so successful that Wuhan is now much safer from coronavirus than New York City or Washington, D.C. The few new COVID-19 cases in China now stem from foreign travelers rather than local transmission, and all are safely quarantined.
We know what we have to do. President Donald Trump and our states' governors and local leaders must act now to save millions of lives.
Yaneer Bar-Yam is the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, where he is an expert on pandemics and other complex systems. He is spearheading the effort of over 3,000 volunteers working to stop the outbreak at endcoronavirus.org. Follow him on Twitter: @yaneerbaryam
这个人很厉害，希望能让决策层看到
是啊！希望他的幕僚能帮他做出正确的抉择，不要让疫情发展到无可挽回的境地。
答好的卷子都递过来了 抄不抄呢
不封崩的更厉害 非强制性lockdown拖上半年一年 不敢想象
没用的，你看看股市啥样了，股市跌是其次，太多公司滥借债要倒闭。 chase 和coti都有3.7 trillion的坏账。 引发的金融海啸失业潮是不可想象的。 你们只考虑抗疫，没有考虑能不能做得到，到时候会大萧条先饿死。 否则为啥英国这么早放弃？ 另外我前面说了只要一个国家不清0 ， 死灰复燃前功尽弃
为啥不封崩得更厉害？日本韩国台湾新加坡没有封不一样也挺过来了？如果人人带口罩，注意保持距离，这个病未必传染那么快。
口罩手套不是万能的，但是非常有用。但是要产能上来。 你lock down 半年航空公司已经死光了，各种small business也死差不多了，大公司也会大批裁员。没有人能幸免
Lock down 不是老川说了算的。是各州州长决定的。现在很难说，说不定几个民主党的大州会继续lockdowns, 他们说不定很高兴股市跌，和裁员，这样老川几年的业绩可清0。
非强制性的lockdown 有多大意义？我在西雅图，今天alki beach, rattle snake trail 人挤人。老美那性格，lockdown 是群居party好时候
那要华盛顿州长定更严厉的规定。Florida 就关海滩了。这还是不应该是federal level 的要求。如果别人在Alabama, 本来人就少，为什么要关海滩？