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Why the west needs to move towards centralised quarantining, as soon as is practical. Time-critical policy threat, please retweet. 1/14 @Magda_Skipper @genemodeller @mrjamesob @piersmorgan @guardian @Telegraph
when, in early february, I heard about the plan to put coronavirus patients with mild symptoms into sportshalls, I felt uncomfortable for several reasons. I wondered about whether such facilities would provide a high standard of care. Wouldnt people do better at home? 2/14
I worried about compulsion, I worried that it implied the situation was desperate. I was not the only one worried. The measure was only implemented after an extensive discussion on Chinese social media, with a large fraction of responses expressing support for the measure 3/14
Furthermore, the first people who went into such facilities did so reluctantly. They had plenty of trepidation too. Totally understandably. The thought of losing privacy, liberty, physical contact with relatives is intimidating and unwelcome 4/14
But the reality of these measures is that they worked for everyone. Most importantly, they kept the family of infected individuals safe. According to the WHO/China report "In China, human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus is largely occurring in families." 5/14
In Wuhan there were examples of entire families dying as well as young doctors. As this NYT editorial argues, a contributory factor might have been high infection doses, which can easily happen within family setting. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/coronavirus-viral-dose.html 6/14
Secondly, these facilities provide good care. They are actually very social places. Everyone is in it together. On chinese social media, lots of videos have circulated of people dancing with medical staff and such like. The resistance to them has disappeared. 7/14
Thirdly, these measures are vital in allowing society to quickly "crush the curve" of infection https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2007263?query=TOC, limit economic and social damage and return progressively to normal life. 8/14
The reality is that infected individuals remain in the community, they inevitably pass on disease. People have to go shopping and get medicine. People who think they have recovered can still be infectious. Every simple decision entails a risk. 9/14
There is no way of bringing community transmission down to zero unless individuals with active infections are properly isolated. Isolating affected individuals is a step towards normality not away from it. Its a step away from misery. 10/14.
Noone thinks that civil liberties allow us to walk where we like on railway tracks. Curtailing people's freedom of movement to prevent infection is the same. If it is targetted, proportional and time/space limited then it is not a fundamental loss of freedom. 11/14
Victor Orban's power grab in Hungary https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/01/viktor-orban-pandemic-power-grab-hungary in the name of coronavirus of course has nothing to do with Coronavirus response, its just a cover for a longheld ambition and should not influence this debate 12/14
And even if you have these doubts, voluntary centralized quarantining should be provided ASAP. it will be popular when people understand what it is for 13/14.
To implement these measures, of course you need testing, facilities and public acceptance. There needs to be urgent work towards achieving all three. It is this that will bring about the situation of relative normality that currently exists in China https://theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/mar/30/lockdown-china-coronavirus-outbreak 14/14
