[The Soup Nazi]

From Zakaria's Global Briefing:

Lockdown Exit Strategy: ‘Suppress and Lift’

What might an exit from lockdowns look like? In Science, Kai Kupferschmidt writes that it will likely involve the “‘suppress and lift’ strategy that both Singapore and Hong Kong are pursuing,” modulating social-distancing policies as the rate of Covid-19’s spread rises and falls.

“The number to watch in the next phase may no longer be the actual number of cases per day, but what epidemiologists call the effective reproduction number, or R, which denotes how many people the average infected person infects in turn. If R is above 1, the outbreak grows; below 1 it shrinks,” Kupferschmidt writes. “To regulate R, ‘Governments will have to realize that there are basically three control knobs on the dashboard,’ says Gabriel Leung, a modeler at the University of Hong Kong: isolating patients and tracing their contacts, border restrictions, and social distancing.” Countries are at various stages of progress: Austria (which has begun to reopen) has brought that figure below one, the UK and Germany have approached it, and Singapore has fluctuated above and below it.

There’s also the question of immunity. We don’t know much about how Covid-19 immunity works, and the UK lost valuable time by considering a “herd immunity” strategy, Kupferschmidt writes, but “some scientists say other countries should consider it once the strain that the first wave of cases has put on their health care systems eases.” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, tells him: “Is it better to have a controlled burn in younger populations right now than it is to prevent it? I think that’s a very important conversation to have.”

A Trade War Over Medical Gear?

President Trump has faced backlash over his move, announced last week and solidified in a presidential memorandum last Friday, to limit the exports of protective equipment needed by health workers treating patients for Covid-19. Criticism may not be the end of it, writes Chad Brown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, predicting US trading partners could retaliate.

“Today, foreign governments could also cut off American access to other PPE, such as face shields, goggles, and hospital gowns, as well as ventilators, catheters, X-ray equipment, or CT scanners,” Brown writes. “Also imperiled are foreign-produced inputs that American manufacturing plants require to make the hospital gear in the first place. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has even warned the administration that its policy could provoke retaliation, noting that ‘the United States also receives essential supplies and products’ from Canada.” US doctors and nurses rely on imports from Canada and Mexico “for the medical headwear, sanitizer, face shields, and protective garments that are in short supply. All of these could be cut off as retaliation,” Brown writes.

The US isn’t the only country putting up export restrictions—European countries have enacted similar limits—but Brown writes that “[t]o paraphrase President Trump, trade wars in medical gear are easy to lose. The human costs could be devastating.”

More from the Briefing:
—Testing and Tracing: Are Apps the Answer?
—The Indian State That Squashed the Curve
—Cold Water on the Models
—What Does Trump Prove About the Presidency?

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