"major challenge of suppression is that… intensive intervention package … need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) – given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed" imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial…
Yes, as I've said, containment is infeasible unless we are willing to impose & maintain for years policies that are far more Draconian than the West has considered in a very long time.
"In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour, … we would predict approximately 510K deaths in GB & 2.2M in the US, not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality"
Yup: "Perhaps our most significant conclusion is that mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge capacity limits of the UK and US healthcare systems being exceeded many times over."
"effective suppression [requires] population-wide social distancing combined with home isolation of cases & school … closure. … these policies will need to be maintained until large stocks of vaccine are available to immunise the population – which could be 18 months or more"
"is not at all certain that suppression will succeed long term; no public health intervention with such disruptive effects on society has been previously attempted for such a long duration of time." Yup.
