Question: How long to we have to stay quarantined from everyone?
Answer: I wish I knew the answer. I don’t think anyone really knows. But we’re not operating in a total information vacuum, so I’m sharing a synthesis what I do know. One take-away — one round of social distancing will likely not be enough.
- 2 weeks: Back on March 16, the President issued “15 days to slow the epidemic,” which made it sound like we’d be spending 2 weeks isolating ourselves at home.
- 1 month or more: On Friday, Dr. Fauci made the following statement about social distancing during an interview on NBC’s Today show, “If you look at the trajectory of the curves of outbreaks and other areas, at least going to be several weeks. I cannot see that all of a sudden, next week or two weeks from now it’s going to be over. I don’t think there’s a chance of that. I think it’s going to be several weeks.”
- 2 months or more: We also have the experience of China to look at — where large swaths of the country were shut-down for 2 months — and we should continue to learn from other country’s experiences. For example, Hong Kong is again taking social distancing measures after having lifted them earlier in the month.
- 3 months or more: Finally, we have the Imperial College model-based estimates of virus spread under various scenarios, which suggested a strategy that includes 3-months of social distancing followed by easement which would then lead to periodic social distancing based on triggers — hospital ICU cases (see Figure below).
Among the many important aspects of these various scenarios is the knowledge that we cannot be practicing social distancing in absence of other key public health interventions. We absolutely have to have ongoing testing, surveillance, contact tracing, case quarantine, and more! The New York Times yesterday included a fantastic article on everything we need to be doing.
Does social distancing need to happen? YES! Can it go on forever? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Is it social distancing the solution? IT’S ONLY PART OF THE SOLUTION. Should you practice social distancing? YES, PLEASE.
Related rant: The fact that New York is again limiting testing because it is trying to save its PPE is heartbreaking and infuriating. The United States has been and continues to fail in this response. To ask people to practice social distancing — shut down their businesses, lose their livelihoods, miss out on the opportunity for an education — while the U.S. Federal Government does not do the needful in the rest of the public health response is reprehensible.
