For now, but what's going to happen as they go back to work, school and resume travel? Unless they stay locked down until we have a vaccine, which is a year+ away at least. And second waves can be worse than the first.

I don't think anyone knows for sure what strategy is going to work best in the meantime, considering experts disagree and the world is conducting a massive A/B test...

Why? When you have aggressive testing everywhere, eliminating the virus seems quite possible. Moreover, when you move slowly to reopen and test aggressively, you can detect any reappearance and squash it.

A variety of the world's diseases are controlled by testing and surveillance, not by cures - TB, for example.

What does aggressive testing everywhere mean though? People spread it whilst asymptomatic. They don't know they need testing. There aren't enough test kits to literally test everyone over and over, and people wouldn't put up with it anyway.

Most viruses aren't as infectious as this one is, comparison to TB or even previous SARS viruses doesn't work for that reason. You can track people down by them expressing symptoms, then test them, then isolate them and it works. That hasn't worked so far with this.

no, test everyone, quarantine every positive case and their contacts. need time to build testing infrastructure. SK shows this is viable.

It's possible to contain it with extreme measures, of course. But what happens when you release the lock down and it's still burning through the rest of the world, especially Africa and India? Do you ban every foreign visitor for the next year?

That’s the bit I don’t get - what’s the end game with the lock down? Are you hoping that everyone actually gets it slowly over the course of being isolated (ish). Otherwise have you not just postponed the issue until you set everyone free again?

Seems like a small price to pay.

from a high risk country, yes. from a low risk country, test every single arrival.

But the tests have a high false negative rate. Let them through and it can all re occur.

Current ones, yes. New ones are in development and keep appearing weekly.