[Goose]

Not a 'lot of people', just about everybody, including probably the majority of health professionals. (I have mentioned my ultra cautious PCP, at the physical she dragged me to on 2/29, was dismissive - 'just wash your hands'.) Not just Trump, but most Democratic politicians were in the same camp. Op-eds in the NYT and Post emphasized the dangers of xenophobia and were dismissive of the virus - this well into February.


There was no political consensus for these drastic measures until the second week of March. I believe it was the clinical experience in Italy and the cluster sites in the US that changed opinions radically and quickly.

Totally agree. There is no doubt that the situation in Italy brought home the idea that 1) it could happen here, 2) given that we knew the disease was present in the US and 3)  not contained in the US, we had to do something. SIP was all we had, so we did it.

What worries me now is that the general population in the Bay Area believes that SIP somehow would eradicate the disease. Even best case, the consensus of expert opinion is that the disease is too widespread internationally to eradicate it globally. The "best case" outcome would be that we can lower the number of new cases to the point we can track and trace the disease spread and contain it via directed quarantine. It is not clear that we are prepared to do this anytime soon, at least from what is publicly known. The only other option would be some form of modified SIP until we get a treatment or vaccine. That is going to be a very hard sell, given that the timeline would be unknown and the economic damage even larger than at present.

[Goose]

Not a 'lot of people', just about everybody, including probably the majority of health professionals. (I have mentioned my ultra cautious PCP, at the physical she dragged me to on 2/29, was dismissive - 'just wash your hands'.) Not just Trump, but most Democratic politicians were in the same camp. Op-eds in the NYT and Post emphasized the dangers of xenophobia and were dismissive of the virus - this well into February.


There was no political consensus for these drastic measures until the second week of March. I believe it was the clinical experience in Italy and the cluster sites in the US that changed opinions radically and quickly.

Totally agree. There is no doubt that the situation in Italy brought home the idea that 1) it could happen here, 2) given that we knew the disease was present in the US and 3)  not contained in the US, we had to do something. SIP was all we had, so we did it.

What worries me now is that the general population in the Bay Area believes that SIP somehow would eradicate the disease. Even best case, the consensus of expert opinion is that the disease is too widespread internationally to eradicate it globally. The "best case" outcome would be that we can lower the number of new cases to the point we can track and trace the disease spread and contain it via directed quarantine. It is not clear that we are prepared to do this anytime soon, at least from what is publicly known. The only other option would be some form of modified SIP until we get a treatment or vaccine. That is going to be a very hard sell, given that the timeline would be unknown and the economic damage even larger than at present.