How We Can Work Together to Prevent Another COVID-19 Shutdown
The novel coronavirus that has wreaked havoc on both our physical and economic health as a society is not going anywhere. In fact, researchers into the poorly-understood virus have warned of the possibility of a dreaded “second wave” of the pandemic.
This new “wave” of the emergent outbreak would be characterized by a new rash of infections. Because the virus is so new, scientists are unsure if an initial infection can trigger an antibody response from humans that might prevent re-infection later. This means that, at least theoretically, a person could become infected with COVID again and again.
Understandably, Americans are anxious to escape quarantine and get out there for all the summer holidays and vacations that typically characterize the season.
President Trump and his White House team have repeatedly insisted that a re-opening of the suffering American economy is imminent. As soon as public officials give the go-ahead, we can expect to see businesses, gyms, churches, and schools open their doors to welcome back their constituents, students, customers, and workers.
How we handle the re-opening as a group will likely have an enormous effect on whether COVID re-emerges to strike again or whether we can keep the spread of the virus at bay through tactical decision-making and cooperation across the public and private sectors.
Learning From Other Countries
Not all countries handled the coronavirus outbreak with the same deftness.
For example, public health officials have heaped praise on the response by the Vietnamese government just to the south of the site of the outbreak in China. Geographically, Vietnam would seem to have been in a precarious situation so close to the epicenter.
However, to date, aggressive lockdown measures by the Vietnamese authorities have largely protected the people in their borders. So far, not a single death in the entire 100-million-member population has been attributed to COVID-19. Additionally, the numbers of infected Vietnamese are substantially lower compared to their neighbors in Thailand, Malaysia, and elsewhere.
Although knowing the exact factors that affect infection rates is difficult due to the emergent nature of the novel virus, experts have identified concrete actions taken by the Vietnamese authorities that limited the spread of the virus.
