Originally Posted by
wco81
what are the chances that they ban these kinds of markets?
I have no idea. I've been in China and gone to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tier cities, but I've never personally seen a market like that, so I have no idea how many places like that there are. Even in the 3rd tier cities, there are plenty of supermarkets and that's where my wife's family does their shopping if they need to get food.
Perhaps I've missed it, but I haven't seen any discussion of just how long the Wuhan quarantine will last. Offhand, it looks like an issue not of days but of weeks, which is an extraordinary amount of time to block off a major city.
They're not even going to be able to keep the place sealed for 3 days at the rate things are going. Involuntary quarantines don't really work especially when people have the ability to communicate with the outside world. What they need to do is send all of the medical professionals and scientists in and make it clear that if anyone gets sick, the best chances of getting treated and surviving are right there in the city, as well as encourage people to take precautions, not gather in large groups, etc, to reduce contact rate. Ask anyone who thinks he/she has symptoms to come in for a checkup too, and monitor all individuals aggressively and prepare to provide medical care unless they are confirmed to not have the virus. Most importantly, the people have to trust what the government is saying and what the doctors are saying. Is that happening? Well, my wife read that some hospitals were refusing to test people for the virus and sending them home without any treatment.
If at any point people feel trapped and they think the treatment options outside are better than on the inside, they're going to leave. They can shut down roads, trains, and airports, but there's almost nothing they can do to prevent people from leaving on foot. If I were in a situation where I felt like my life was being threatened by staying, then I would leave on foot, call a friend or family member who has a car outside the quarantine perimeter, and tell him/her to pick me up and give him/her the coordinates of my location. So what they've done thus far is literally the exact opposite of what you need to do to get an outbreak under control. The US would probably have better luck trying to quarantine Manhattan, and only because it's an island. But if treatment options were better outside of the quarantine zone, there would still be a ton of people sneaking out via the East River and Harlem River, and I'll bet that a few would even make it across the Hudson. The only way to effectively force a quarantine on a city the size of New York or Los Angeles is to make people not want to leave.