US is going to be locked for 18 months unless a miracle drug is discovered
An 18 month continuous shutdown is pointless. The article does refer to rolling shutdowns, which makes more sense.
As there is no current vaccine, strategies are just based on 'flattening the curve' - i.e., keeping the rate of new infections below the maximum capacity of the healthcare system. Once the current shutdown has continued for long enough so that the peak has passed and the medical professionals can cope with demand, then it makes sense for the lockdown to be lifted
for a period of time.
After this, once infection rates start to creep up again, another lockdown can be put in place to keep the curve within manageable levels. And so on.
You would expect that the initial lockdown - the current one - is the biggest and longest. So long as the guidance is sufficiently clear and the rules strong enough to slow the rate of new cases, then it should be safe to lift restrictions once that peak has passed. The crucial thing is keeping the R
0 below 1 - so that each new infected person infects
on average less than 1 other person.
If people start talking about 18 month lockdowns, I don't think there's any way it can be continuous. If after a few weeks you are not seeing a big reduction in new cases, then it means your restrictions are not tight enough, so you strengthen them, and look again in another couple of weeks. 18 months is not required. The cumulative economic damage from a lengthy shutdown means that every government faced with this choice will implement stricter lockdown terms.
Economies around the world are likely to re-open gradually and cautiously, certain types of shops and businesses first, followed by others. You can bet that everyone will take it seriously from now on, and any subsequent lockdown will likely be shorter than this initial one.
As for a vaccine - the standard response seems to be 12-18 months as a minimum, but there are things that can be done to speed this up, such as running human trials early. Obviously there is a risk attached, and any volunteers will have to be well aware of this, but I think it's not necessarily the case that we'll have to wait a year.