Eradication in the US seems unreasonable, and just keeping hospitals less than overflowing not enough.
Keeping it under control but not eradicated means averaging exactly 1 over time, which seems like a much harder balancing act.
Focusing on the rate as the metric of attention seems very much like the right thing to be at the center of public policy.
Just put the control rods - I mean open restaurants - on a control loop driven by number of number of hospitalizations.
Helps if you have prompt and delayed transmission modes, so you can regulate at the slower speed.
I'm not saying it's not achievable. Just that you need to evaluate if it is achievable before you focus on it and it certainly doesn't seem like its "obvious" that it is to me.
Not surprising after COVID burned through their population (quarantine or not) the case numbers have subsided. If anything NYC demonstrates that quarantine was entirely ineffective, and that the biggest mistake was not focusing on protecting the people actually at risk.
The most interesting takeaway from COVID is that “both sides” were right. It is much more deadly than an average flu (for the elderly) and also much less deadly than the average flu (for those under 50).
Are you serious? How do you even come up with misinformation like this and not even bother to back anything up with any sources? How do you seriously look at the case charts and pretend like going from 10k cases/day to 500 cases/day was an inevitable outcome resulting from burning through nursing homes? It would be funny if it weren't completely insulting to their herculean efforts in containing everything when so much of the rest of the country is going in the opposite direction. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronav...
1) NY has the highest cases per capita and death rate per capita in the country. [1] [2] This is what I mean by burned through their population. Serology estimates about 20% of NYC population was infected. [3]
2) NY’s policy blunder in shipping COVID positive patients into nursing homes is well documented. [4]
#2 did not lead to #1, nor did I claim it did.
Their “herculean efforts” to contain COVID notwithstanding, NY is in the process of phased reopening, just like pretty much everyone else.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi...
[2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi...
[3] - https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pande...
[4] - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ap-count-4300-virus-...
Most places just aren't being transparent. Wearing a mask has turned into a political or moral statement without being driven by a goal. Leaders aren't really selling any goals, though CDC / various health departments probably have goals, the technical details are not being communicated. Instead all you see is vague information and seemingly arbitrary action from leaders and virtue signaling from the population.
In Trump-led America, I think the goal is pretty obviously positive political outcomes for Trump. CDC and others might have goals but I haven't seen them.
Part of the problem is people are generally so stupid about failure that any goal setting sets you up to be a target for people angry about not meeting your goal or not setting an aggressive enough goal so being vague is seen as the best strategy, even though I think it leads to the sort of "fake news" vs "moral crusade" problem.
Eradication seems possible when there's a small number of cases, and effective border control (being an island nation helps a lot). In the US it's going to be difficult to eradicate, because people can move about the country easily and the case load is high.
I haven't looked at other states, but Washington state has fairly clear metrics for opening restrictions at a county level. We'll see how well that works, I guess. Other states will be doing their own thing, as well as other countries, and maybe we can figure out which methods are more or less effective and either switch or know for next time.
That is, we want to minimize infections, just not at all costs (to society/economy/...). And similarly, we want to minimize impact on society/economy/..., just not at all cost (to health).
Keep in mind that every infection bears a risk for long time health impact or short term (death), no matter if a hospital bed is available or not.
Finding this compromise is a matter of opinion and therefore a political question. It's not as easy and black-and-white to formulate as it would be to say whether we do 1 or 2.