Introducing “The Protective Quarantine” for COVID-19
A Path to Saving Lives without Sacrificing the World Economy
· The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading rapidly and inflicting a devastating impact on our people, healthcare systems, and economies across the globe.
· The current solution for slowing the virus’ spread and enabling our health care systems to cope has been ordering people to stay at home indefinitely.
· With everyone staying at home, the global economy has come to a grinding halt. The emerging economic crisis will be worse than anything we have seen before.
· The world cannot manage two massive crises at the same time. We need to explore alternate approaches that save lives without destroying the world economy.
· This article introduces “The Protective Quarantine” as an alternative solution that protects both lives and the economy.
The Pandemic
There can no longer be any doubt of the severity of COVID-19. It is rapidly spreading across the globe and killing more people every day. If we assume a 1% fatality rate and a 70% infection rate, almost 50 million of the world’s 7 billion people could die.
The Immediate Health Care Crisis
This pandemic has led to an emerging medical care crisis in which our hospitals do not have enough capacity to take care of the onslaught of people who will become critically ill. Many people will be turned away at overcrowded hospitals, increasing the virus’ fatality rate and killing people who could be saved.
In order to “flatten the curve” by decreasing infections and giving the medical care system a fighting chance, countries all across the globe have started asking all of their citizens to remain at home.
The situation is so dire that we have to take drastic measures, but the current approach of “flattening the curve” is not viable. Asking everyone to stay at home will slow down the spread, but it will also destroy the global economy.
Unanswered Questions about Staying at Home to Flatten the Curve
Is this only going to last a couple months? The best argument for having everyone stay home is China’s supposed success in controlling the virus in Wuhan with this approach. In little over two months, Wuhan reduced new cases down to zero with citizens still under lockdown. However, we don’t yet know that this model will be successful in the long term.
Once lockdowns are lifted and travel is allowed, the virus may flare up once people move around and travel to other areas, potentially get infected and return. Each time COVID-19 flares up, Wuhan may have to lock everyone down again. China’s characterization of “domestic” and “foreign” new cases is a clear indication that they do not have the situation under control and are weaving a narrative to support shifting the blame.
If not a couple months, how long? Initially, stay at home orders were for weeks. Now, it looks like they may be in effect for months. According to one epidemiologist, the vaccine combined with people catching the virus and developing their own immunity (ideally at a controlled rate) will create the epidemiologist’s golden ring: herd immunity. This could take more than a year.
No one really knows how long this will last; it is this uncertainty that is driving the emerging economic crisis.
The Emerging Global Economic Crisis
With people staying at home, we may indeed “flatten the curve,” but only at the expense of the health of the global economy.
When people stay at home, consumption of goods and services drops. Everyone stops traveling, going out to restaurants, shopping at stores, and buying automobiles. Consumer consumption is 70% of our GDP, meaning the bulk of our economy has evaporated with consumers staying home.
With such a large drop in consumption, just about every company has seen a sharp drop in revenues. With the uncertainty of how long this will last, companies have rapidly started to cut costs. Millions of workers have lost their jobs in just a single week .
The economic fabric which holds businesses and markets together is trust. Every business trusts that the businesses with whom they work will continue to run. The majority of businesses operate on low margins and often have significant debt. With such a sudden drop in revenues, it is unclear which businesses will remain viable and with each passing day, this fabric of trust is fraying. Businesses are holding off on transactions with other businesses and the situation is continuing to worsen.
The emerging global economic crisis is going to worsen the impact of the pandemic. As people rapidly lose their source of income, it will exacerbate our ability to minimize the deaths caused by the pandemic. Many of the people losing their jobs are the sole source of income for their families and they often have to take care of the people most impacted by this virus — people over 60 with pre-existing conditions. The majority of the people who lose their jobs will not have enough savings to weather a prolonged hardship.
Instead of a single, global crisis, we now have two major global crises — a global pandemic and a global economic crisis. It is going to be extremely challenging for all governments to manage through the pandemic alone. Managing a global economic crisis at the same time is going to be impossible. The United States and Europe are the largest consumer markets in the world and support much of the global economy. As both these economies grind to a halt, it is sending shockwaves across the globe and many countries will see rising unemployment rates and companies going out of business.
The combination of restricting people to their homes and many of them losing their source of income will start to strain the social fabric that keeps society functioning. The longer this lasts, the more likely we will see flare ups of social unrest. Also, there is a risk of global instability, as many authoritarian governments will not be able to maintain control over their citizens.
Looking at the Problem Differently
The epidemiologists watching the approaching medical care crisis have implored all governments to ask people to stay at home to slow the spread. However, they have not taken into account the consequential impact on economies and the resulting global economic crisis.
Governments and their financial institutions will try to alleviate the economic crisis with the only tools they have available –lowering interest rates and printing money. Some governments, like those of the United States and the United Kingdom, plan to stimulate the economy by sending their citizens money. Although this may alleviate some financial anxiety, it will not bring back consumption and jobs as people are still restricted to their homes. Increasing credit is not going to restore trust and confidence. Bailing out some industries does not make sense when all sectors are failing.
Maybe we need to pose the problem differently. The goal is to minimize the number of deaths while helping our healthcare systems cope and avoiding a global economic crisis.
Paths to an Alternative Solution
In order to develop an alternative solution, we should lean on our understanding of the virus itself. We know that, for the most part, it has minimal impact on people under 20. We know that for people under 50, the mortality rate is similar to that of the common flu. The virus primarily impacts people who are 50+ and particularly people who have pre-existing conditions.
Rather than tracking and quarantining those carrying the virus, what if we proactively protected those most likely to be severely ill and succumb to the virus? It makes the most sense to focus protective quarantining on just the at-risk population, allowing those with little risk of experiencing severe complications to go on about their lives, keeping the economic engine of the world running.
The Protective Quarantine
This solution is called “The Protective Quarantine,” because it proactively protects the high-risk population from getting the virus. It ideally protects them for long enough for scientists to develop a vaccine. Of course, this same at-risk population would be the first to receive the vaccine.
By keeping our economic engine running, this solution also protects the world from facing a global economic crisis at the same time it has to navigate this pandemic.
For this solution to work, it will require a collective effort to protect lives, the global economy, and our societies. This will mean governments, companies across several sectors, and families and individuals doing their part. The virus does not care about geo-political borders and we need to look beyond our own self-preservation to protect those at highest risk and protect the global economy.
How are we going to implement a protective quarantine for the high-risk population?
The first industry that can help is the Hotel industry. There are 5 million hotel rooms in the US alone, and they are currently sitting empty as people stay at home. At-risk individuals would quarantine inside hotel rooms, with the government paying the hotels $100 per night for room and board for isolated individuals. For the approximately 5 million rooms, it would cost approximately $500 million per day or $15 billion per month.
Quarantined individuals would also receive a stipend of $100 per day for their voluntary participation, which equates to another $500 million per day or $15 billion per month, creating a total cost of $30 billion per month. Even if we kept the at-risk populations isolated for a full year, that would only equal $360 billion in government spending. Although there are more than 5 million high-risk individuals, this protective quarantine would protect a large enough percentage that it would significantly reduce the number of high-risk people requiring care at our hospitals.
In order for this to work, the at-risk population would need to be quarantined to their rooms as they would be if they were already infected. Staff would need to take protective measures to ensure transmission didn’t occur during quarantine. As there are many types of hotels, those quarantined could choose to pay an upcharge to stay in more expensive hotels. Since visitors wouldn’t be allowed, large tech companies like Apple, Samsung, Netflix, Comcast, Zoom and others could provide means of video communication and entertainment at minimal cost.
It could be treated as a paid vacation of sorts. If a family member wanted to accompany a guest, they could join them in the same room, but would also be under quarantine. This seems like a drastic action but requesting that the entire population socially stay at home is already a drastic solution.
What happens if someone is already infected and gets sick? As everyone else is isolated in their room, they will not infect any of the other guests. As soon as anyone shows any symptoms, they would be transferred to a facility intended solely for those who have already contracted the virus.
With the rest of the population returning to their normal routines, the number of infections would rise rapidly. For low-risk individuals, however, recovery from COVID-19 is the same as recovering from influenza. They could stay home and seek medical treatment only if their condition became severe. Only about 2% of people under 20 require hospitalization. For people between 20–50, about 20% require hospitalization and 5% require ICU care. For these people, the fatality rate is similar to the common flu. Still, this means we will need a significant number of additional hospital beds.
For this, we need the help of the Cruise Ship companies. Worldwide, there are approximately 250,000 rooms on cruise ships. These ships could help provide additional hospital bed capacity at all the major ports in the US.
The government would also pay $100 per night per patient to the cruise lines, which is approximately the average cost per night for a cruise. If these ships housed 250,000 patients, it would cost $25 million per day or $750 million per month. These ships could provide hospital overflow in every port they service across the globe. These sick bay ships would be seen as an act of goodwill by the cruise lines, which are experiencing a lot of negative publicity in light of the outbreaks that occurred on board several ships. Providing a positive storyline and income in the meantime could help cruise lines recover after this pandemic blows over.
Since every company will feel the economic impact of this pandemic, they all have a vested interest in coming together to protect the global economy. Manufacturing companies should proactively transition operations to provide the hospital equipment and supplies needed to cover the shortfalls we’re experiencing now. Restaurants could be recruited to provide meals for the overworked hospital staffs. Young adults and college students could be hired by hospitals to help with the additional hospitalizations.
Every company will be badly impacted if we have a global economic crisis. Some may go out of business. The surviving companies will suffer from fewer customers who can afford their services.
The Need for Alternate Paths
Our current course of action will lead to economic ruin across the globe. Companies will lay off workers, buying power will decrease, livelihoods will be ruined, and our future will be altered for years — maybe even decades — to come.
The Protective Quarantine provides an alternate path that minimizes the number of deaths, helps our medical care systems cope, and avoids creating a global economic crisis. It is also far more cost effective than the multiple trillions of dollars the US and other governments will waste trying to protect their economies.
We must not complacently accept the first solution brought before us. Instead, we need to start a dialogue about alternate solutions and we need to test these solutions. The Protective Quarantine is one alternate solution that deserves a test run at the very least.
