Well this definitely struck close to home yesterday. I got an email from my HR Dept informing me that someone I had contact with last week tested positive so I’m to self-quarantine until April 2. Luckily we’ve already been doing that although I may have to supplant my daily runs with an indoor workout. Now it’s just a waiting game, I guess. I feel fine so far.

"Car wrecks" isn't a highly communicable respiratory disease.

Driving cars directly leads to tens of thousands of annual deaths in the U.S. alone. So the analogy is appropriate.

If we have to shut down everything for an indeterminate period to prevent a communicable disease from killing people, we should probably ban driving to prevent vehicles from killing people. This assumes that saving lives trumps everything else, of course.

I'd argue there's actually a stronger argument for banning vehicles, given that car crash victims are largely random, while Covid-19 victims are already compromised. My child is highly unlikely to be harmed by Covid-19, but is somewhat likely to one day be harmed in a car crash.

You can't catch "car wrecks" if someone sneezes on you.

This argument is like the argument pro-gun NRA people use that says that car wrecks kills people, so should we ban cars too? It's kind of obvious that a worldwide pandemic isn't the same.

Those who are saying the facts aren't in are entirely correct.

No matter what public policy is pursued here, nothing will be truly definitive until after it has actually happened......or not happened.

The question is what policies to pursue in a time of uncertainty.

And

How to obtain as much certainty as possible as quickly as possible.

This is a draft modelling study of COVID out of Oxford.

It suggests, at least in Italy and probably the UK, that the infection/exposure rate may already be over 60%.

That deaths are a lagging indicator.

That spread is grossly underestimated, and the mortality rate is, as a result, overstated.

To be clear, this is a draft.

Its also a model.

Like all models it uses assumptions; as such it should be considered and weighed but not treated as absolute fact.

Now, for the math/medical nerds out there............

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnh...2813%29.pdf?dl

Right, and you can't get in a car wreck if people don't drive. The analogy is appropriate.

It would be very easy to reduce car wrecks to near-zero, which would save tens of thousands of lives annually. So why not do it? Don't you care about people's lives?
If we banned guns, there would obviously be fewer gun-related deaths. If we ban driving, there will obviously be fewer car-related deaths. If we strictly enforce a quarantine, there will be fewer Covid 19 deaths. The analogy works. All these actions would save lives while imposing other burdens.

As much as it pains me to say this, Crawford does have the basis of a point.

That doesn't mean the current restrictions are wrong/invalid. Its too early to make such a determination.

But he is correct that it is entirely appropriate carefully weigh the impacts both positive and negative that's one's actions cause.

Should public health take priority over the economy? Of course, if the question is read that narrowly, hand-down.

However, one must be careful to consider whether as many or more lives may be lost or more real suffering (not inconvenience) caused by one's set of actions vs less robust restrictions.

***

Now if people here would just read the study I posted above and provide thoughtful input.

The analogy is ridiculous. First of all, we have instituted significant measures to make car driving safer (traffic laws, safety standards, licensing, etc.). Second of all, we know NOTHING about COVID19 or how many deaths would result from not quarantining. If car driving was threatening to overwhelm hospitals within the next 12 weeks and a car could kill someone who walked to a kids birthday party or hugged their grandma or sat in a meeting, then yea it would probably be outlawed. Scientists are still discovering new ways the virus is transmitted and can survive. It's a terribly lazy and stupid analogy and frankly betrays a lot about the people who have been trying to use it.

What I kind of see happening is everything opens up, everyone puts on a happy face, and nobody talks about the bodies piling up as waves of infection wash this way and that across the country.

I have to say... Of the all the various dystopian futures I saw unfurling because of inept federal leadership, I never expected We Happy Few:

• Video Link

If this model is correct, deaths will stop abruptly stop in Italy in a week or so and flattening the curve would only take a few weeks of distancing. I don't buy it because of the diamond princess fatality rate, though.

Thanks for taking a read.

I'm uncertain, myself.

But I found the model intriguing.

Exactly. Car deaths have been overall declining with time, not doubling every 2-3 days.

So the n isn't relevant, only the rate of increase matters? If we had thousands of Covid-19 deaths daily, but the rate were flat, we should look to end social distancing measures?

The rate has slowed considerably in the last 48 hours, BTW.

If lives matter equally, the cause of death is largely irrelevant. It shouldn't matter if I'm killed by a gun or a knife if the ultimate result is I'm dead, and interventions shouldn't be less rigorous if equally preventable.

Obviously. You are being purposely obtuse. We accept car driving deaths in our society because we have all entered a social contract that cars improve lives by whatever amount, and we have taken significant measures to make it safer, and can protect ourselves with safe driving, so we accept the .0001% rate of death among the American populace per year.

Here's the real car analogy: If a flat (NOT expontentially increasing) 30,000 people per year died of COVID because we all stopped shaking hands and continued to stand 6 feet away from each other but got back to work, and sports stadiums and concerts all cut their capacity by 50%+, and transit agencies and large buildings adopted significantly increased sanitation practices, then we'd probably just accept the virus as it is, like we have done with car safety and car deaths.

I know of one person in his late 30s, and another in his early 40s who has died from covid-19 so far. Neither had known health issues.

I don't think that's the analogy. The point is to save as many lives as possible, not to reach some equilibrium of deaths.

But we'll know if that's true very shortly, as the rate is no longer exponentially increasing in the U.S., therefore calls should increase for normalization in the coming days, as long as deaths are stable.

Well clearly you know about as much about infectious diseases as you do about the history of mass transit.

Exactly!:tup:

People sometimes contort, bend, twist, turn, flip or do whatever to data/information to fit their argument or agenda. Like awhile back when gas prices soaring - comparing the price of a gallon milk to the price of a gallon of gasoline - which is kinda less ridiculous comparison as the one made here.

It just occurred to me; are people who are doing this right now in relation to the pandemic, in the bargaining stage of grief? Still trying to convince themselves that things would get better soon if only business restrictions were eased?

This has been a serious disruption in all of our lives; I really think people are going through some form of grief. Just a thought.