How do you limit the spread of an infectious disease?

Since the virus spreads through contact with an infected person, prevent physical contact between sick and infected people and healthy ones.

How should we do this?

One approach: quarantine ALL. Prevent (as much as possible) both the sick and the healthy from physically contacting each other.

In China, currently, around 80.000 people were infected (and most recovered). That's (much) less than 1% of the population, and slightly over 1% of the 60 million who were quarantined.

Let's assume an average person meets with 50 others daily, and let's also pretend that these 50 are different for each individual. That's 4 million people who might be infected. 

So for the (unrealistically high) estimation of 4 million potentially infected people, China has quarantined 60 million.

There is another approach.

In countries like South Korea and Singapore, they went with a different implementation by dividing it into two parts.

First, South Korea strived to isolate the sick to prevent contagion. They then supercharged it by immediately attempting to identify the sick.

Singapore started by measuring people's temperature as a sign of sickness. Not precise but quick and easy to perform on a large population. South Korea has conducted hundreds of thousands of Coronavirus specific tests.

Which approach do you think is best?

Consider all implications: freedom, social, psychological, and financial, and of course, which approach is manifesting the underlying concept in the most effective way?

Both approaches can (like we now see in China) produce the desired result of stopping the spread of the disease. Each approach has a significantly different cost, in ALL aspects: the number of suffering and dead, the number of bankrupt businesses and lost jobs, and the psychological suffering of a large number of people.

All the more tragic, as some simple "thinking ahead" could have shown China (and others), what the outcome of each approach would be.

If you know the essence of an idea and what it tries to achieve, you'll have a clearer view of what you need in order to execute, and achieve the goal. At Idea Vanguard, we call this the Idea DNA.

Discovering the DNA of the idea itself, defining its essential moving parts - the ones "acting" together to achieve the desired goal, immediately shows you which courses of action are wrong, before you start pursuing them.

The idea of limiting (in time and numbers) the spread of a disease has only two essential "actors":

- Locate the sick and infected

- Isolate the ones in danger of spreading the disease

Countries like China chose to ignore an essential part of this idea and are paying the price.