The Doctor Who Stopped Ebola Says We Can Stop COVID-19

Yaneer Bar-Yam, a physicist and pandemic expert, says there is only one way we can stop the spread of COVID-19 in the USA.

The scientist who came up with the strategy that helped stop the spread of ebola in West Africa in 2014 says the fastest and even the only way to contain coronavirus in the U.S. would be a five-week national lockdown. Right now, not enough states are on lockdown and people aren't taking social distancing seriously enough, so the virus is just going to continue to spread.

He says that if we were to do that, by the fifth week, the number of people getting the virus would be a small fraction of what they are now.

Plus, the lockdown would give us time to scale up our number of tests, process them, and start properly quarantining people with the virus.

And while a five-week lockdown would have major ramifications for the economy and our way of life, without it the number of cases is just going to keep going up exponentially and our medical system will not be able to handle it.