LogFAQs > #939720318

Lokarin posted...

I just mean for the normies the spread period is now suspected (need more confirmations) to max out at about 3 weeks as opposed to indefinitely.

It's never been assumed to be "indefinitely", though.

We've known almost from the beginning of things that the timescale seemed somewhere between two to three weeks, with the first week or so potentially being an asymptomatic period where someone could show no symptoms yet still be infected enough to be contagious (which is the main reason why the rate of infection is so high for this virus - people who are sick spend something like 1/3rd to 1/2 the time completely unaware they're contagious and likely making no real effort to avoid people or prevent spread).

The standard advice from doctors has always been for people who are confirmed infected to self-isolate for about two weeks after they stop showing symptoms, just to be safe. After that, the assumption is that you're non-infectious.

The long quarantine period overall has never been because of how long we assume the infectious period to be as much as it was meant to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by a massive spike of infections all at one. Which we've generally succeeded at.

Ironically, the quarantine was potentially too effective - after two months, we've still only got about 1-2% of the population as confirmed cases (and infection rates have actually been dropping for a while now). The problem is, you need somewhere around 70% to develop effective herd immunity. Essentially, at the current rate, we'd have to stay in self-isolation for something like 7 years (at which point, the economy would be a smoking crater and most of us would be pretty much fucked anyway).

It's why so many people are pointing out just how necessary a vaccine is for this - it's pretty much the only thing that's going to allow everyone to get back to normal functioning without just shrugging and accepting a few million elderly/health-impaired are just going to die. Until a vaccine exists, pretty much everything we do causes problems.
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