I don’t think there is much chance of containing an outbreak in the USA for a couple of reasons. Folks with no insurance, or high deductible insurance are unlikely to go to a hospital for a test as they are expensive.
Many folks cannot self isolate for long because most don’t have paid sick leave so will work as long as they are able.
FWIW, I don’t the UK will be able to contain a major outbreak either.
Yeah, exactly. I hope it doesn't come down to forced confinement.
Without meaning to be Captain Obvious here, if it's true that 1 out of 5 becomes ill enough to require hospitalization to be kept alive, a lot of people will die. In the USA you may be able to get the best medical care in the world, but you have to be able to pay for it and there has to be a bed. On a "regular" night there are often people on gurneys in the hallways at the emergency rooms, and although medicaid will pick up the bills for emergency care for the indigent, the care you get as a medicaid patient is not of the same quality as that you receive as a "paying" customer. (Been there, done that.) You don't get access to all the treatments or necessarily the same medications.
So with a massive influx? My guess is that in the USA they'll set up cots at the National Guard armories, like they did in the 1918, and triage the worst cases out of there. It's my understanding that here in the UK a lot of the NHS hospitals are running at 100% capacity most of the time anyway, so even if they postpone non-critical admissions, they're not going to be able to handle the influx. At least any care one would get would be free, as long as the care remains available. There are visiting doctors and nurses here, but they are already stretched thin. With the EU professionals leaving the UK on top of that, I don't know how things will work here. Nobody can be in three places at the same time. And, of course, since the precursors of a lot of the medications are made in China these days, I would guess there will be some rationing of available medications.
I was somewhat disheartened to see a piece on the BBC (I think it was BBC) on their news channel telling people how to care for a sick person. Separate dishes, towels, room (if possible), use of paper tissues and bagging and disposing of them carefully, etc. As if this was all something new. Perhaps it's been different here, or it may be my age - when I was a child polio, measles, chickenpox, mumps, etc., were running in the wild and so your basic housewife knew all about taking care of sick family members. Including cooking special meals. I remember our house going into a virtual lock-down many times, when one of us caught some obnoxious, contagious disease. (Despite my mother's best efforts, which were significant, the illness usually cycled through each of us. Unfortunately for her, usually sequentially, so she was "on duty" for many weeks at a shot.) I guess that knowledge has all fallen out of the general consciousness these days?
I remember we had a book that showed how to make a rudimentary equivalent to a surgical mask out of cloth. It would, of course, not stop a particle as small as a virus, but it would inhibit droplet spread. I think I'll research that a bit. Something I have noticed here that I never saw at home - people coughing without covering their mouths, or sneezing, spitting on the sidewalks - hell, pissing on the sidewalks! Is that just a Glasgow thing, or is it a UK thing? It's terribly unsanitary. And gross.
