tl;dr: Nobody knows.
We've known about the SARS coronavirus 2 for about 3 months. Which means that there is a lot we don't know about it. Which also means that concerning the best way of controlling it - nobody really knows.
Everything we do to contain the virus has a cost (and by that I don't mean only economical cost). In Norway we have closed down schools and a lot of businesses and we've implemented strict border control. No doubt it will contribute to contain the virus. But as a result we also see that for instance SAS (our main airliner) has grounded almost all of it's planes, and will (hopefully temporally) send home 10.000 employees (90%) of the stock. Other airliners have let a similar number of employees go. In addition to unemployment, this also may severly affect an important part of our infrastructure, air transportation. Hotels are already closing and when summer comes, sorry to tell, not many touristswill come. A lot of businesses run the risk of bankruptcy within a couple of weeks. Unemployment will of course rise, perhaps enormously. This is a huge experiment, nothing like anything we've done before, and we've no way of knowing what the outcome will be. And for the record, we don't know how efficient any of the different actions we take are for this particular infection, and that includes border control now.
Finding the optimal balance between what we gain and what we lose is extremely difficult It may very well be that it's better to accept more infections, that the total outcome would be better. Or we should impose much stronger restrictions. Seems like China's got control of the Wuhan outbreak now, but by using very harsh methods. I'm not sure that's the way to go.
So, deciding what to do takes time. It's not something that can be decided upon in an hour. Which inevitably means that actions will be implemented later than what is optimal. And I suspect, implementing harsh restrictions very early run the risk of the restrictions not being taken seriously and even sabotaged by the public, because the epidemic doesn't seem to be that serious. So, when should they implement restrictions? I don't know, but it seems that most countries started taking action last week or within the last two weeks.
It also has to be said that in this case most, perhaps all we watchers are amateurs. I may, because of my education, claim to know a bit more about microbiology and infections than most of you, but compared to people who has specialized in and worked for years in epidemiology, I'm definitely an amateur, they certainly know significantly more about this than I do. Doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything that's being done. I do for instance think that Sweden should close schools, but that's mostly because most other countries have chosen to do that. And I don't subscribe to the view that it's best to let the infection run it's course so that we all become immune. But I have to aknowledge, I can't claim that I know much/enough about it. And by extension, neither can you.
The actions we have taken will (probably) "flatten the curve", so that, if we're lucky, the number of infected won't exceed our capacity to treat them. One important question remains: Will we be able to eradicate the virus? I don't know, but I think not. For three reasons.
1. Animals have it. We have managed to eradicate smallpox, but the only host for that virus are humans. So, when no more humans are infected, the virus will be gone. That won't be the case with this coronavirus.
2. Insufficient infrastructure in many countries.
3. We have very little immunity against it, billions of us are susceptible.
So, personally, I think that no matter what we do, we will battle this virus for years to come. OTOH, we have the original, closely related SARS virus which doesn't bother us much now. We haven't had any (according to Wikipedia) reported cases of SARS since 2004. But compared to the 8000 SARS cases in 2002 and 2003, this new virus has after just 3 months infected close to 200.000 people (official number, real numbers are probably higher), so it seems to be much more contagious than SARS. So, no, I don't think it will disappear anytimne soon. Which of course begs the question: For how long can we maintain all these restrictions? Months? Years?
Hopefully we will eventually find a vaccine. And several groups are testing the drug Remdesivir, which seems to work against other coronaviruses (I may say something about this in another post). But at the moment, nobody knows if this will work.,
a pibbur who aknowledges that there may be watchers who know more about this than him.
PS. It's somewhat fascinating (to me) that such a tiny bugger, measuring up to 200 nm (0.0002 mm) can create so much havoc on a planet measuring 12.700 km. DS.