danieldwilliam | On Speculating About A Lock Down Period

My guess is that we'll be in some form of close national quarantine for 8 weeks.

I think this for two reasons.

One, my experience as a parent tells me that if you have a time in mind for an unpleasant wait for your child of X time when asked you tell them "we will talk about it again in X/2 time" on the grounds that they will accept that they can wait x/2 time and then when asked to wait again will kno that they can wait x/2 time. What I think will happen is we will do 3 weeks, then be told we need to another 3 weeks and at the end of those 3 weeks have a 3 week phased stand-down from close control to less close control.

Two, some Fermi estimating. The virus seems to have about a 2-3 period when it is infectious. People seem to be most infectious for a week before they show symptoms, then a week whilst they are symptomatic. Then less infectious, and also less mobile as they are ill.

The aim of the game is to reduce the onward transmission rate from about 3 to below 1.

So, in 2-3 weeks time, everyone one who has the virus will be symptomatic and will have passed it on to everyone they can pass it on to. Which, if we are all closely quarantined will just be people in their own household. (We will still get onward transmission from contact during "essential work" and exercise and so on). Then another 2-3 week period will mean that anyone who caught the virus from someone who only caught it on Monday will be passed the period when they, themselves are most infectious. Most of those households will then shift to self-isolating rather than being pre-emptively restricted. Another 2-3 week period gives you another lap of containing people who have the virus

So over a 8 week period we have between three 2-3 week rounds of infection and almost everyone in a household that has the virus in it will have either had it, or be having it but passed the most infectious period, or be having it and be in bed obviously ill.

If we are very lucky then we might reduce the number of undetected carriers to double digits over that six week period.

Then I think we see some restrictions lifted. A pick up in the number of infections for about 8 weeks followed by a second round of 8 weeks of close confinement ending about mid- September.

That's my guess, for what it's worth.