America will Require a National Lockdown in February 2021
When we think of how Covid-19’s second wave is occurring in the United States, due to widespread health system failures, the U.S. will require a national lockdown this winter.
It won’t be good for the economy, it wont’ be popular, but it will be necessary.
The exponential spread of the coronavirus in December, 2020 will be unlike what most people expect. We are talking about community spread into the mainstream population. A 7-day average of 175,000 U.S. cases is just the beginning.
Since a Vaccine requires 70% to achieve herd immunity, that won’t be reached in 2021, at all. A 90% efficacy of these vaccines doesn’t mean that 90% of people will be immune to the virus, but only that it has a 90% reduction of virus transmission.
Pfizer, Moderna and now the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca are in line to provide the country with three different COVID-19 vaccines if given government approval. So, a vaccine efficacy of 90% means there was a 90% reduction “from the number of cases you would expect if [trial participants had] not been vaccinated.” This is not sufficient to prevent a widespread National lockdown in the U.S. that should have been implemented earlier and multiple times.
Don’t listen to what the politicians are saying, witness what’s actually happening. There’s only been 60.5 million cases up till now, but the Second Wave means more than 300 million infections will occur. The positivity rates in the U.S. continue to climb, and exponential spread is now occurring. This does not bode well for the Winter months of 2021. The U.S. already has between 1,500 and 2,000 deaths per day, before it’s gotten to its worst.
The U.S. has about 39,500 cases per 1 Million population, but with the current R rate this will continue to go up. The economic collapse in Q1 will be more severe than we are being told. But without a National shutdown, it will be even worse. We can see how this is working in places like Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Alberta in Canada. Leaders must balance, public health, the economy and mental health of young people. It’s not an easy thing to do.
Since more than 50% of cases are spread via asymptomatic spread, contact tracing doesn’t work. The December surge in the U.S. will be so bad so fast, that health care systems will be nearly totally overwhelmed. The reluctance to a full-scale national lockdown is a huge mistake for our long-term health and economy. New model projects COVID-19 cases in the US will nearly double over next 2 months. So by the time Biden is in power, it will already be too late.
COVID-19 is running unabated across almost every American community, and one model projects it will take the country just under two months to reach a staggering 20 million cases. The U.S. only has around 5.1 million cases today in late November, 2020.
So the pandemic hasn’t even truly hit until it has, and that day and those weeks are fast approaching. Doing a National shutdown during the winter months at the very peak of the 2nd wave will become a necessity, not just an option. Telling people anything else is not just dishonest, it’s irresponsible.
Targeted measures don’t work with an exponential rise of cases. They simply don’t lower the curve, they only slow the spread. But the economy will always follow the actual public health situation. So Health comes first. As we have seen in how Asia has handled the pandemic vs. Europe and South/North America. There are very real winners and losers in how we’ve handled this public health crisis.
America will have to do a National lockdown during the early months of 2021. If it puts economy over the health of its citizens, there will still be dire economic consequences. America’s approach to the mismanagement of the pandemic will go down in history as the start of the U.S.’s decline globally. Without a National shutdown, over 1 million Americans will die from the pandemic.