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523“Flattening
the Curve” Through COVID-19 Contagion Containment
effective containment of contagion, as was done in the Southwestern
Indian state of Kerala, in Vietnam, and in Argentina.
Flattening the Curve?
The principal strategy adopted by most governments is to “flatten the
curve,” so that countries’ health systems can cope with new infections by
tracing, testing, isolating, and treating those infected until an approved
vaccine or cure is available to all. But this is easier said than done.
Vulnerability to infection and capacity to respond depend on
many factors, including health care system preparedness, leader-
ship experience, and ability to manage specific challenges posed.
Government capacity to respond depends crucially on system capac-
ity and capabilities—for example, authorities’ ability to speedily trace,
isolate, and treat the infected—and available fiscal resources—for
example, to quickly enhance testing capacity and secure PPE. Funding
cuts, privatization, and other abuses of recent decades—in the face
of rising costs, not least for medicines—have further constrained and
undermined most public health systems, albeit on various pretexts.
Physical distancing, mask use, and other precautionary mea-
sures, besides mass testing, tracing, isolation, and treatment, have been
able to check contagion without resorting to draconian lockdowns.
Such measures have been quite successful so far in much of East Asia,
Vietnam, and Kerala. Precautionary measures must be appropri-
ate and affordable. To minimize the risk of infection, authorities can
encourage and enable, if not require, changes in social interactions,
including work and other public space arrangements, including for
offices, factories, shops, public transportation, and classrooms.
Lockdowns can have many effects, depending on context. Good
planning, implementation, and enforcement of movement restric-
tions, and adequate provisioning for those adversely affected, are
crucial, not only for efficacy, but also for transitions before, during,
and after the lockdowns. Nonetheless, lockdowns typically incur
huge economic costs, distributed unevenly in economies and societ-
ies. Governments must therefore be mindful of costs, including of dis-
ruptions, and also of how policies affect various people differently.
Hence, the effectiveness of a lockdown has to be judged primarily by
its ability to quickly “flatten the curve” and to ensure no resurgence of
infections. Success should not be measured by duration, enforcement
stringency, or even unsustainable declines in new cases.
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Titel
- VULNERABLE
- Untertitel
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Autoren
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Verlag
- Ottawa Press
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Abmessungen
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Seiten
- 648
- Kategorien
- Coronavirus
- International