Centralized quarantine again--time to consider it?

[Kokeshi123]

I and a few other posters talked about this a bit last year.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3895610-The-probable-reason-why-deaths-are-so-slow-to-fall

A few people have tentatively started mentioning it again now.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4132111-Tighter-restrictions-What-else-can-be-tighter?pg=5&messages=100

Is it time to reconsider? The evidence seems to suggest that it can enable the virus to be controlled with fewer restrictions on all other activities.

LangClegs posted a striking image showing where transmissions seem to be coming from. It perhaps gives us a hint of why lockdowns have not been as successful as was hoped: yes, you can reduce the transmissions between households somewhat, but then you've got people in the same household basically breathing all over each other all day long. Sharing toilets especially may be a big risk factor, yet a huge percentage of households in the UK have only one toilet per family.

Does the level of crisis in the UK right now perhaps merit a rethink? The UK really cannot afford to furlough more and more people and close down more and more of its economy, and the arguments here just seem to be going round and round in circles, because every "tightening up" measure seems unaffordable or will crash the economy. Centralized quarantine (= people watch TV in a peaceful environment and eat meals left at the door while they recover) could greatly reduce the level of lockdown that's required. There are ways to handle family situations sensitively to make sure children are not separated from both parents.

It will transmit most % wise where people spend the most time.

Put covid exposures in quarantine and cases will then appear to "originate" in quarantine.

This is a virus and it will spread. You can't ban people from living with family in the family home, it's barking madness.

Put covid exposures in quarantine and cases will then appear to "originate" in quarantine.

No, it doesn't, because people are isolated in individual hotel rooms with their own toilets.

Centralized quarantine appears to be a key deciding factor in whether a country can control outbreaks of COVID-19.

You're infectious before you're symptomatic, so I would expect most people in the household will catch it before someone even knows they're sick. It might make more sense for shared guess, but for partners and children I think just keeping the virus within that one household is the best you can do.

I think track and testing would have to be faster to really achieve much. I think it could be offered as an option but not necessarily compulsory. There would though then be a duty of care and need for frequent medical checks. Often the person doesn't realise how ill they are.

Could you have an option for people who have tested positive to go into the nightingales? If they were not actually very sick, they wouldn’t need much nursing care.

Travellers to England now need a negative covid test to board their plane, and can take another test on day 5 after their return if they want to leave quarantine earlier. There are no SA entries plus another few more banned countries.

Attempts at hotel quarantine need to be very well organised or they create new infection centres as in Australia for example. I don't think we are organised enough.

You and they, if they decided to use this can fuck off . And I would not comply, and I would avoid any circumstances in which I needed to test.

Sorry, just realised OP is asking about forced quarantine for everyone testing positive, not travellers.

I cannot see this working.

No, it doesn't, because people are isolated in individual hotel rooms with their own toilets.

And minor children? Who will isolate with the kids, mum or dad? Will social services have access? Are there doctors and nurses on site? How is food provided? Plumbing repairs? Delivery of clean sheets? Laundry? Will the army be on site to contain it?

It won't be one person in a hermetically sealed box.

How would this work with children?!?

Using the Nightingales has definitely been floated as a possible solution.

Yes, testing and tracing would have to be stepped up. But just making a start with the cases that are confirmed now would be better than nothing!

I think the problem with "just keep it within the one family" is that with infectious diseases in general, those infected through household contact tend to get significantly sicker than those who picked up their infection at a shop etc. Nowadays, people are perhaps less aware of this because so many infectious diseases are controlled with vaccines, but with chickenpox (which is still not widely vaxed against in the UK), I think it's quite widely known that the "second sibling" (and third, and fourth, if you have a big family) is usually quite a lot sicker than the one who brought the pox into the family in the first place. It seems to be something to do with the fact that the immune system is more likely to be completely overwhelmed when it is exposed to big doses of the virus over many days.

At the very least, I find it odd that the government in the UK has never even made hotel/Nightingale isolation a voluntary option for people?

(Currently surrounded by piles of laundry and housework that needs doing, having finally got the toddler to sleep. It occurs to me that isolating in a hotel with books and TV for 2 weeks would actually be rather nice....!)

For the record, NZ made a brief attempt at this then decided it was a bit optically tricky (when it turned out that poorer ethnic minorities were being "requested to agree" to "come with us", whilst the white folks in big houses on the Shore were allowed to remain at home).

Same would happen here.

It occurs to me that isolating in a hotel with books and TV for 2 weeks would actually be rather nice....!

Fuck that and fuck any politician who attempts this.

We're a long way off a situation where I would even consider this. It would have to be bubonic plague or something. Just no.

The UK really cannot afford to furlough more and more people and close down more and more of its economy

Except forced quarantine would lead to more of this. Plenty of people currently work from home during their self isolation, if they aren’t too ill, as do their partners. If you force quarantine then you immediately have massive childcare issues - e.g if I caught it and was sent to quarantine, my husband would have to take two weeks leave from his NHS job in order to look after our children. Whereas if I wasn’t too ill, we’d muddle through with both looking after them and him working from home.

Besides which, people are starting to have had enough already. There is no way this would be accepted.

If this came in people just wouldn't get tested so you would then have to move to forced testing and then dragging people out of houses. No I don't think it is a good idea.

Jesus Christ, no. What is wrong with people? Stop again and say it slowly, that means separating very vulnerable people potentially. Children from parents and vice versa.

It genuinely scares me the thoughts people have. This is not ok.

The infection rates are currently so high that, even if this were considered a good idea, WHERE would you put them all?

And even if the Premier Inn and Travelodge combined did have enough rooms, you'd then have issues of logistics - who staffs it how do you provide 3 meals a day room service from a small hotel kitchen only really geared up for doing breakfast buffets, and so on.

It wouldn't work in reality when there are this many infected people.

Sounds like concentration camps for ill people. A ghoulish idea.

Over and above all of that which is reason enough on its own not to do it there's a massive failure potential with sick and infectious people travelling to get to the death camp quarantine facility.

And besides that, all the people who work in the hotels those that haven't already lost their jobs, 'cos a lot of the hospitality work has already gone and the hotels are running on skeleton staff levels would be put at hugely increased risk of infection due to the requirement to bring food and wash laundry and clean rooms and so on.

So you'd have a bunch of low-income, and in a lot of cases ethnic minority, hotel and service workers at high risk of getting sick just so another group of (probably wealthier) people can isolate in a hotel.

It feels like social cleansing by virus, frankly.

I think that would put people off getting tested which we don't want.

I can’t see your image and what did Langclegs say ?

What would happen if you were in quarantine and you became very unwell? Who would make that decision? Would a doctor visit everyone every day to assess them?

Well I wouldn't get tested, it is bad enough being ill without having to stay away from home as well. I imagine that if I had it my husband would catch it before I had symptoms anyway.

Leaving aside whether it's a good idea or not, it's an impossible one.

Like an effective track and trace, this is an idea that can only work with small numbers of cases. We're getting around 50,000 positive cases a day, there just isn't the capacity to house all these people and support them to move into this quarantine. It's like all the people banging on about copying New Zealand - it's a 'how do I get there? Well, I wouldn't start from here' solution or, more succinctly, an absolutely useless one. There's no point dwelling on things you could do with small case numbers if you have tens of thousands of them.

So what would happen to all those people left requiring care when you have carted their carers off or them off?