Lock down, don’t shut down

When authorities imposed a quarantine on the sprawling Monrovia, Liberia, slum of West Point in 2014 in order to stem the Ebola epidemic, people escaped by sneaking through abandoned buildings or bribing soldiers. For some public health experts, the failed containment offered a lesson in what not to do. But in light of China’s draconian sealing-off of Wuhan to fight the novel coronavirus, Italy’s national lockdown and restrictions imposed in New Rochelle, New York, it is worth considering anew the merits of physical separation to fight a spreading respiratory disease.

We are all vulnerable to the coronavirus, since there is no vaccine or therapy or antibody to protect us. The virus can spread in a cough, so keeping people apart makes good sense. But dictating how and where individuals can move about is difficult for governments, especially in democracies.

In New Rochelle, a one-mile radius “containment area” was imposed this week by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, with a midpoint at a synagogue at the center of the state’s outbreak. Cuomo is sending in the National Guard and shutting schools, churches and synagogues. Again, that makes sense:

The contagious nature of this virus demands physical separation.

But governments must be careful not to strangle a society while trying to save it. People should be urged to avoid crowds, forgo concerts and cope with closed schools, but they should be allowed to shop for groceries and visit a doctor or their family.

Normal goods and supplies need to flow. In other words, lock down but don’t shut down.