Like many of us nerds on the internet, I’ve been reading the Imperial College paper discussing Covid-19 mitigation.

They make a case that closing schools/colleges now will make a difference in total deaths. However, if the closures are limited to just a few months, come fall there is another explosion of cases almost as high as the first peak.

This problem was brought forward a few days ago, before the latest change in UK policy. The UK authorities argued that closing schools now would be counter productive.

Yet there is a lot of pressure in the UK to close the schools.

Anyway, the important take away from that paper is that for the mitigation actions to be most effective they are assumed to be in place for five months.

5 months.

It’s going to be difficult for many Americans to be without public entertainment that long. I gather most mom-and-pop restaurants will go out of business. Etc.