Here is an article I have found on what Taiwan and Singapore did to cap their numbers and not go into shutdown.
The countries seem to have found the sweet spot between a 'it’s just like the flu' reaction, and imposition of economically devastating lockdowns
nationalpost.com
Kwong does see possible barriers to Canada adopting a similar approach, like chronic under-funding of public health here and a populace less at ease with government control than some east-Asian societies.
“ITaiwan and Singapore have unitary governments that manage health care for everyone. Canada, with its federal system, essentially has 13 separate health jurisdictions, each delivering slightly different responses to the pandemic.
But Dr. Jason Wang, a Stanford University professor who published a recent paper on Taiwan’s COVID-19 successes, believes there is no real reason Western nations can’t take similar action.
Taiwan’s response in a sense began shortly after SARS, when it set up a national health command centre, which includes a central epidemic command centre.
As news of the new coronavirus emerged from Wuhan, it took extensive measures to identify cases imported into the country. Officials actually boarded planes from the Chinese city to assess passengers, ordering those with fever into isolation.
It merged health and travel databases — a seemingly complex task achieved within a day — then made that information widely available to help identify cases.
The government moved quickly to stockpile supplies, recruiting hundreds of reserve soldiers to work on production lines for surgical and N95 masks, so by late January there were 44 million and two million of each, respectively. Meanwhile, it restricted the retail price of masks to avoid profiteering, and eventually implemented a rationing system that allocated citizens two masks a week.
It also aggressively pursued quarantine violators, tracking down three Hong Kong visitors who had disappeared for a week when they should have been in isolation, fining them $3,000 each. And it published the names of three others who had not gone into quarantine as instructed.
A notice sent by text to Singapore residents details fines for violating at-home quarantines and how authorities will check up on those in quarantine. Supplied
Authorities also took a tough stance on misinformation, threatening $130,000 fines for spreading fake news, and interrogating suspects who allegedly started a rumour that increased mask production was creating a toilet-paper shortage."
You can tell me if this is in line with what you know, but more importantly, whether the same would work based on the size, culture, and government structure of the US. And keep in mind Trump fired pandemic response teams and took time before action was taken.
www.bbc.co.uk
