Looking at logarithmic plots and numbers of new infections from www.wordometer.info it looks like in most European countries quarantine is working. For instance, in Italy
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
the logarithmic plot of all cases and the statistics of new cases show decrease. This seems to be the case with the majority of European countries for which there is statistics. It still is not slow enough, but in a short time one should see that the number of active cases decreases. This is naturally what should happen if people avoid infecting others for two weeks. Presently it is believed that after 10 days from the beginning of being infected the number of viruses in the body is so low that the risk of infecting others is small. Still one should assume that the virus remains in the body for one to three weeks after symptoms disappear. For those who have very mild symptoms, two weeks may be enough, but this is not certain. One should still avoid contact with others.
In much of the rest of the world, like in the USA, similar quarantine should have similar good effect. However, there seems to remain some basic number of new infections. Even in China there are every day new infections from Chinese coming from abroad to China, and in South Korea there are new infections even though the number of active cases has been falling for a long time. It is not yet clear when, or if, the normal way of life can be restored. But for the first time the news are positive, at least in a number of countries. The plots for Italy allow interpolating the expected number of deaths, which may be some 30,000. In other countries the expected number can be different in proportion to the population as the quarantine method does not require that the infections decrease because the population is saturated to any given probability: it simply cuts the probability of new infections to a very low value with restrictions. When applied to the whole population this method has the advantage that testing people for the virus is not essential. Therefore different amounts of tests done in different countries have no importance. It is simply minimizes contacts that could infect others for two weeks and in this way eliminates also unknown infections.
Will this quarantine remove other, less serious, infectious diseases, like other human coronaviruses or common flu? Probably it will reduce them for some years, until they reappear from some other part of the world. It would be nice that many of these would disappear. Some remain in animal populations and they cannot be removed by quarantine. Unfortunately, Covid-19 will probably also remain in some bat populations. Hopefully before the new wave of Covid-19 comes there will be a vaccine and medicine.
This is a typical zombi war. A virus is not really alive. It is a living dead, which attacks living beings and turns them into zombies that attack more living beings. Quarantine is the ancient and working protection method when there is no medicine or vaccine, but it ruins the economy. I wonder if zombi movies have any alternative cures. I think in the night of the living death the army finally dropped a bomb to the diseased town and that finished it. But maybe there is some better idea in some other movie. I am fairly sure this zombi – living dead was invented from viruses. Like the Monster of Frankenstein was invented from Freemason-Communist conspiracy, and werewolfs are memories of berserk warriors. Thus, vampires are memories either of the antique cure of leper by blood baths, or alternatively of money lenders. It is not that junk books and junk movies do not teach anything. They often have stolen the ideas from something real and then you can reverse engineer the real idea and use it.
The number of new infections in Italy seems to be falling as it should when quarantine is correctly applied. I doubt that the population is anywhere close to saturation and suggest that the plot of infections is not a logistic curve but a quarantine curve. Some other European countries show similar declining growth of infections. Especially interesting is Finland. Today the new infections was 66 or 71 depending on the source, and the directions seems to be decreasing. This is interesting because Finnish health authorities have a totally different (and idiotic) idea: they plan on creating herd immunity. Herd immunity would lead to high number of dead and immunity so achieved may be quite short time, some months. Finnish authorities are, as usual, wrong, but let us hope that the people keep quarantine rules and do not spread the virus, and the epidemic dies out by itself. I think it is possible. A strange thing is Poland. The country tries to impose quarantine that should work, but today the number of new infections is again at 10% of yesterday’s total, that is, not decreasing. I hope this was just returning Poles and the quarantine does work, as it should and must if correctly applied.