If we buckle down now while putting everything we can into testing and tracing, the rest of us in the developed world might be able to make it to the place where South Korea and Taiwan are now with a decent amount of normalcy and almost nobody losing family members.
Thing is testing is borderline useless without the tracing. Tracing requires way more infrastructure to be set up in terms of people making phone calls and coordinating things behind the scenes.
from the CDC website:
Key Concepts
* Trace and monitor contacts of infected people. Notify them of their exposure.
* Support the quarantine of contacts. Help ensure the safe, sustainable and effective quarantine of contacts to prevent additional transmission.
* Expand staffing resources. Contact tracing in the US will require that states, tribes, localities and territorial establish large cadres of contact tracers.
* Use digital tools. Adoption and evaluation of digital tools may expand reach and efficacy of contact tracers.
First point is that it takes a load of people to do. Is that being organised in America? I don't think it is being organised here in the UK.
Second point. It says support. People have to be WILLING to quarantine. Note that it doesn't says "imprison" or "enforce". It simply says support. For many people, "support" which basically means guidance, will be enough. For some people, they still won't get it and they will leave their home regardless of "support".
Third point is like the first point. You need an army of people to make this even remotely effective. Is someone coordinating this now in America? In at least
some states?
Fourth point. This is about apps that people can have on their phones. I don't know what the apps do. I'm guessing they allow the contact tracers to communicate with the people in quarantine, but once again, are the apps being developed? Are they already being made available? Remember, an app won't force someone to stay in their home. They have to b willing to do so.
From a UK perspective, we have none of this. The government has set a stupid goal of performing 100,000 test per day by the end of April, and at the moment it's barely reaching 20,000 tests per day. The results take 2 to 4 days to come back and once they do, what then? We tell infected people to stay at home for 14 days and isolate and hope that they do it.
I'm not saying contact tracing is useless, people think it's something that automatically beats the virus. I think the countries where it has been effective are those that are organised, planned ahead of this pandemic i.e. were getting ready in January, and they are also those countries that have a national mindset that is compliant. People there are happy and willing to follow instructions. They are not rebellious. Germany, South Korea etc. Trying to implement this somewhere fractured, militant and disorganised like the US is a borderline impossible task. Same with the UK.
Unless the US and the UK are actively planning to set up all this infrastructure very soon, or are in the process of doing so right now, then all this talk about testing is nothing more than hot air, because without the tracing to support it, it's jut a bunch of random almost useless activity as far as I can make out.