Hm. Doesn't the paper go on to say that full lockdowns would need to be in effect for 2/3 of those 18 months? I will read that article, but I don't think the paper is saying that we could return to normal with monitoring and case tracing and localized lockdown to quash outbreaks for the remainder of the 18 months.
e: Okay, read the paper. Respectfully, many of the estimated numbers there seem entirely inconsistent with the literature that I've been reading from epidemiology experts. I haven't seen a single paper estimating 10 million deaths in the United States, and I'm not inclined to trust an uncredentialed medium post (I know this is relevant to the OP topic).
I also really value modeling. Ferguson ran the numbers and seems to suggest that "the dance" would not be an effective approach for suppression long term and that we would need to go under frequent shelter-in-places again. This medium article doesn't seem to cite any sort of number crunching that the hammer followed by the dance would work for long-term suppression.
I don't think this decision is up to the public health officials. Indeed, you can read an interview with Fauci where he is making this exact point and saying that he has asked, and asked, and asked, for social distancing to be observed at press conferences.
I actually do not think I've seen any honest recounting of the Imperial College study. Unless I'm misreading it, the study appears to be saying that we either need to have essentially a complete lock down for the next 18 months (which **definitely has not** been reported by most media organizations) or we shouldn't be implementing full social distancing, but rather an optimal policy of social distancing of those over 70 and school closures. Complete social distancing followed by relaxation before the development of a vaccine leads to almost as many deaths as unmitigated spread.
I've seen so much discussion of how the Imperial College paper has influenced governmental policy, but our current approach (which seems to be - hard, social isolation for a month or two followed by relaxation) is exactly the approach proscribed by the paper.
I would love if someone could weigh in with how I'm misinterpreting the paper because the distance between what the paper seems to say and the rhetoric I've seen online seems to be incredibly large. For instance, if I am interpreting the paper correctly, China is not a success case but will soon start seeing exponential growth again once they re-open unless they implement SDOL_70.
It's interesting because you would intuitively think this, but there is actually not terrible evidence linking periods of economic growth to increased mortality.
Here is the article in nature.
Is non-profit funding really that inelastic in depression?
China is not going to recover and rebound quickly if they have no herd immunity. They're either going to have to be on permanent war footing, decide that the number of deaths they will face is acceptable. All the best epidemiology modeling I've said points to a resurgence in cases in any country that does a complete lockdown (a la China) for only a few months.
Just look at the Neil Ferguson study if you want an understanding of the likely impact of various interventions.
We were headed for a big recession anyway
Always odd to me when people lead with a comment like this, since recessions are essentially unforecastable due to the nature of market pricing. [1]
This comment seems heavy on claims, but I'd like to at least see some of the reasoning behind it. Why will female employment go up? I suspect employment in general will go down, so predicting an increase is surprising.
[1]: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/stop-predicting-recessions/
Yep, I meant it in the correct fashion :) Prescribe would imply the opposite of what the paper said.