ment’s plan to drive toward herd immu- nity; rather, there was an acknowledgment that might be what happens because the virus could be so hard to control. “It’s not been an aim to get everyone


infected as soon as possible. It’s more this really tough situation we’ve got where the options we have are probably not going to be able to fully control this in the long term,” Kucharski said. The country has now taken a swing


toward the types of early and aggressive social distancing methods other countries are trying to implement. The government is urging people with even mild symptoms to self-isolate; but Kucharski worried that message was going unheard in the din about herd immunity. The country, he said, was trying to


save some of the more difficult measures — really stringent social distancing ap- proaches that are hard to sustain over time — for closer to when they are needed. “It makes sense to use them, given that


they’re short-term measures, use them when they’ve got the most impact,” Kucharski said. “You can’t shut down your


country for months.” Rivers suggested that was a risky ap-


proach. “I think that’s a difficult thing to time. My recommendations for the U.S. context at least, is to begin social distanc- ing measures early,” she said. In the United States, a tepid early re-


sponse — marked by a prolonged delay in ramping up testing and a White House that initially seemed intent on playing down the scale of the threat — has given way to a war footing. In mid-March, White House urged


Americans to embrace social distancing by not taking part in gatherings of more than 10 people. In a number of communi- ties, restaurants are closed to all but take- out or delivery service. Some states have closed schools. The country is on edge. But with large-scale testing capacity


still coming up to speed, it remains unclear how deeply the virus has embedded itself into the country, and whether the measures people and their local, state, and national governments are trying to adopt can slow the coronavirus’ progress. It is also unclear how long communi-


ties can sustain the dramatic lifestyle changes that appear to be needed to slow the virus’s spread. “Right now people are approaching


this if they are basically sheltering in place for … a Minneapolis blizzard, lasting two or three days. And that’s the mindset that they have. Where, in fact, we need to look at this like a coronavirus winter, where we’re only in the first weeks of what could be a long season,” warned Michael Oster- holm, director of the University of Min- nesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy. “This could last easily many months.


And we need to make our actions propor- tional to the risk in the community or else we run the risk of people just getting tired of them when that particular community has not seen increased transmission of the virus.”


Helen Branswell, Senior Writer, Infectious Disease, Statnews.com. STAT delivers fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about life sciences and the fast-moving business of making medicines.


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