> This also presumes that teh authorities can affect this outcome one way or > another.
It's pretty clear that lockdowns have worked much better than we had any reason to hope they would have. (our lockdown is working, and we still have 70-75% of our workforce active). So the question is, can one massively reduce the physical connectivity of the social graph long enough to drive infection rates down to a containable level? My hypothetical working model at this point is that polities with lower wealth/income ratios will be less able/willing to sustain the effort than polities with higher wealth/income ratios. The US as a whole is currently the major counter-example: it, like CH, has a net wealth/GDP ratio of about 5. But they seem to be much more eager to reopen than we are. (then again, their unemployment has skyrocketed, while ours has barely budged. So there may be structural issues at work, as well) On the other hand, this model predicts that rich countries (CN, IN, NL, PT), with a net wealth/GDP ratio of 4 (the world average) will last longer than poorer countries, such as DK (3,6) or even TZ (1,4). It also predicts that richer US states (CA) will not be as eager to reopen as poorer (GA, TN). I hope I am wrong. -Dave
