We May Soon See Color Coded Threat Levels For Coronavirus
Very much like the terrorism threat levels after 9–11
The White House seems to be taking a report out this week from infectious disease modelers and analysts in Britain very seriously. And this report seriously warns that even after Coronavirus deaths peak sometime later this year, and then recede, the virus will re-emerge from time to time. In fact more frequently than not. And that might involve sudden reinstatement of school closings, work from home, and quarantine, among other things. For a very long time. Until there’s an approved, widely-available vaccine, which these researchers believe will take 18 months.
Their chart above shows an expectation infections will continue to spike well after they peak (orange-ish lines), and therefore maximum preventive measures will need to be in force about 2/3rd of the time (blue squared-off bars). They could be relaxed (for instance, some students could return to schools, and people under the age of 70 could do less social distancing) about 1/3 of the time. This would be based on an “on/off switch” that would be triggered by a certain number of Intensive Care Unit cases. (Note: this chart is only a projection for Great Britain, so while the threshold is most certainly going to be different in the U.S., if this model is right, the pattern should be substantially the same.)
So it stands to reason that certain preventive and reactive measures would become standard guidance for various rates of new infections. Leading possibly to an alert system similar to the one we had in place after 9–11, and was ended about 10 years later, which is why we don’t see those colorful threat level signs all over the place anymore. And a lot of people paid very little attention to them anyway, because there was very little you could do to protect yourself from the random threat of terrorism at any level, other than be more vigilant, and perhaps control your movements a little. And of course “if you see something, say something”. But that applies at any time. In fact, a large part of the reason the Department of Homeland Security stopped using the system…
