Originally Posted by
jfsully
Fair question, and I will say my answer is based on intuition and some experience, but not on some big study that can prove it.
If it's not spread at all person-to-person for 2 weeks, maybe a month, it's gone. So if maximal protection measures are used: hand hygiene, masks, social distancing, large-scale testing and quarantining of known positives, that should do it. Why hasn't that happened? Because large pockets of people are not doing these things and are passing it around, creating rolling reservoirs of virus.
It seems clear to me that this is a fairly contagious virus, on the level of the common cold, and that most people carrying it don't get very sick but can still pass it around. Measures that would minimize spread of the common cold (maybe 10-15% of which are from coronaviruses) should work. If there is another explanation for what we have seen with the recent large numbers of positive tests in places that have relaxed social distancing, and the clusters of positives among, for example, spring breakers, I'd be interested to hear it.
I suppose you could make the argument "well, since not enough people will follow strict containment procedures to actually stop this thing, we shouldn't bother." That's a defensible position, but to me it feels like surrender. I know that wearing a mask feels to other people like surrender. So, here we are, stuck with half-measures. Better than nothing? I don't know. Let the debate continue.