Thank you for this warning. I wonder what China is going to do about tourism?

The most important fact about social distancing is that it does not reduce the R0 of the virus; it reduces of the Rn of the virus in the hunkered down population. Because no herd immunity is conferred by social distancing, the fire must burn itself out completely — the bug must be extinct — before more fuel can be poured in the form of pre-crisis social interaction.

One may recall President Trump saying that the US had only fifteen cases, and would soon disappear. As we have seen, fifteen cases without social distancing leads to disaster. That same principle applies on the way down. When there are only fifteen reported cases, there will certainly be asymptomatic infectees in the population. If those people are allowed “normal” contact, R0 will return to 2.4, infection will spread, and we will be right back where we started.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens in Wuhan once the restrictions are lifted. Has the bug disappeared there? Will no visitor bring it back?

I just don’t see how we get past this without a vaccine. I’d appreciate Dr. Lin’s thoughts on this.