I don't know.. I think this is a little 'sky is falling.'-esque.After reading through the paper, here's my knee-jerk prediction about how this will play out.
After an initial halfhearted attempt at flattening the curve, Western nations will give up. "Mitigation doesn't work and suppression is too hard and people don't comply with it anyway."
So the virus will burn through the population and cause however many deaths it is going to cause.
Except that China will keep it suppressed. They've already shown that they can.
If it plays out like this, I see the following implications:
- Massive worldwide grief as people's hearts are broken when they lose multiple loved ones
- Obvious economic collapse as production drops to a fraction of the previous level (lost workers + bankrupt businesses + depressed or health-challenged survivors)
- Enormous national security risks as China sees an opportune time to covet American farmland
Once we get widespread testing we'll be able to contain things much better even without these drastic lockdown measures.
Things are bad, but I don't think we'll get to this.
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