The director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy said in a new interview that a second wave of blockages would likely be necessary to stop the current outbreak of the coronavirus.
“If we want to be like other countries in the world that have successfully contained the virus, then we must take the drug now,” Michael Osterholm told NPR. “We won’t get there unless we lower the level of this virus again. And there is simply no other way to do it literally, but a kind of second block. And this time we are going to do it right.”
Osterholm noted the fact that European nations that imposed strict blockades have largely resumed in-person schooling and other activities.
“The countries that caught fire last spring and then made a blockade are now the ones that have successfully reopened,” Osterholm told NPR. “Their economies are back, they enjoy life and still maintain control over the virus.”
Osterholm also said he was skeptical of projections by some experts that mask public use by 95 percent of the population could eliminate the need for blocking measures.
“Unfortunately, several people have substantially overstated the extent to which masking will decrease transmission,” he said, citing recent spikes in Hong Kong, where mask use is much more widespread.
Caitlin Rivers of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health issued a more optimistic note, telling the network that less stringent blocks, if necessary, could be effective in fighting the virus.
He pointed to states like Massachusetts that have equipped their public health workforce to deal with the virus, and also said the data indicates that outdoor spaces like parks and playgrounds, which allow for better distance, could remain open while visitors wear masks.
“We know more about the virus and how it spreads now than it does in the spring,” Rivers told NPR. “So, I think, for jurisdictions receding toward closure, I don’t think it has to look like spring.”
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