Your last line is the super important point, occurred to me today as well. If we beat this thing with social distancing, idiots will say "See! There was no reason to panic!"

Indeed. Just 2 days ago I was talking to someone who was annoyed by people taking measures: "See, in China they're already seeing infections going down! No point in taking all these measures!" Without apparently realizing the reason why they're going down is extreme is precisely those extreme measures.

There’s not much evidence that the extreme “lockdown” decisions made by China had a significant impact on the outcome either way.

Social distancing, contact tracing and isolation of the sick work well, and that was almost certainly the critical portion of the response.

For example, this paper makes a solid argument that the travel ban delayed the epidemic across china by only a few days:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/05/scie...

The problem with local, less aggressive measures is that people act in their self interest to bypass them for convenience or safety, and they make the problem worse. Recent examples:

- Lockdown in northern Italy: People ran to the south taking the virus with them. - Schools closing, folks asked to work from home in Madrid: Families drive to the coast where bars and restaurants are full.

I agree that in a place where compliance with social distance measures is high (I'm thinking South Korea, Japan), that would be enough. But that doesn't work everywhere.

The big issue we have seen with contact tracing in this pandemic is that it doesn't catch everyone. Those contacts you didn't find start new chains that you need to find and disrupt, but doing that requires more tests than are available: People who haven't been traveling are simply denied tests. So you never find those chains, and you get out of control community spread.

I think it is fine to let the idiots win on this one and rub it in our face forever. I would be willing to boost the ego of anyone if we can contain this.

How will they affect the next corona virus or other pandemic though? They'll be able to see "COVID-19 was a joke, this one will be too".

I mean if we have arrived at a point where majority of the people can't be convinced of the existence of this, and the only way to make them understand is to do some damage, we have bigger problems as a society in front of us. You don't throw a kid under a bus if he doesn't understand you, you just keep trying with incentives and maybe minor punishments.

It isn't about a popularity context. It only takes 1 harmful idiot (see the story behind Patient 31, linked elsewhere in this thread).

You do understand that everything would have been fine if we simply pretended this virus didn’t exist, right? A few extremely old people would have died slightly sooner. That’s it.

No, that is totally wrong. The medical system would collapse. See what is happening in Italy. Most of the critical cases require ICU. There aren't enough ventilators if everyone gets infected. And without proper care, not just old but even young people may face huge problems.

Wrong. The short explanation is the chart on this page: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/science/coronavirus-curve...

And that's not even addressing that the at-risk group isn't just the old.

Wrong. The short explanation is the chart at this link:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES5U9YUXkAA1e7H?format=jpg&name=...

The disease is extremely contagious. Hospitals would've been even more overburdened as they currently are if we just "did nothing" because it would've spread much quicker.

You might get to the point where you need to make a choice between who you're going to accept in the hospital (younger people then get the fast lane over the elder due to potential higher amount of life years being saved). I believe its like that in Italy at this point.

If old people quarantine themselves the chances of them not getting this disease increase. I know a few elder (including loved ones) who I don't want to see passing away, so I have an interest in this.

On a different note, I also find it selfish and distasteful to feel careless about big groups of other people based on discriminatory elements such as age.

At my work people are ridiculing the serious response and extreme measure by countries.

They boasted about buying now cheap tickets to fly on vacation instead of "suffering through" home office as ordered by our company.

These are educated people. Doesn't seem to save them from ignorance though, as they are on the "just a flu" train.

Smart people to be sure. The global hysteria for a simple flu is mind boggling.

It’s like the IT dilemma all over again.

and what if it died down due factors other than social distancing? You're positing an irrefutable claim which is sloppy logic.

Whether it's social distancing or some other factor, the important point here I think is that it wouldn't have died down on its own. For you to look at the positive outcome alone and say "see, it wasn't a problem to begin with!" is just as irrefutable as to say it was the social distancing. So you have to use understanding of the disease, logic, data from other countries, etc, to come to your conclusion.

(You ask an annoying, but fair and important question here. We shouldn't lose our skeptical mind.)

The claim is not that if it dies down after social distancing, therefore social distancing was to blame, but that if it were to _really_ die down due to it, the measures would seem like an over-reaction to a certain segment of the populace. I think that, while a bit presumptuous, will hold true.

Given the different dates (and levels of aggressiveness) countries are enforcing social distancing, it should be quite refutable.

But, these measures need to hold on for long enough, until all reservoirs are depleted. Relaxing the measures after the transmission rates decrease will only stop it temporarily, so it will flare right back up if it has a source that was missed.

Also, the lower the R factor, the faster measures can be relaxed. With an R0, if you want to guarantee putting out everything, you need to hold the measures for the longest possible lifetime of the disease. ( what's that? A month?)

Flare up is my biggest concern; this is what the Spanish Flu did.

I’m wondering what fraction of little kids already have it and are serving as essentially asymptotic vectors. Once a large enough fraction of little kids are immune or resistant, r0 may be permanently reduced.

That's my thought as well. With having a vaccine like 12-18 months away at best, is there another strategy than just trying to eradicate it in a _massive_ concentrated worldwide effort?

I think all the current measures are for the purpose of curve flattening. The volume under the curve (infected people) will be the same but it will be spread over a longer time period and hopefully avoid a spike of cases that will crush health care systems.

Unfortunately that math doesn't work. The US has roughly 100k ICU beds. Critical patients are spending about two weeks on a ventilator. Doing the math that means we can treat a maximum of 2 million patients this year.

Assuming half the country gets infected and the 20-30% hospitalization rate remains that's 35 million or so patients.

So best case we can treat about 5% of the cases. And that's if we let no other patients into the ICU. Which isnt practical because they run at ~80% capacity or more anyways. So really that number drops down to more like 1%.

The only option is to contain it or watch millions die.

Does anybody have opinions on outdoor activities in small groups? Supposing we've come to the point where we're otherwise staying at home where possible. It could get psychologically daunting, especially for those of us who live alone. (Video conferencing could help as well). I thought some outdoor games with people in real life, maybe 10-15 people, staying a meter away from each other, etc. Is that small risk, miniscule risk, significant risk?

At my jiu jitsu club, we're moving into no-contact grappling. This will keep us safe from the virus yet give those in quarantine some much-needed mental relief. See e.g. https://streamable.com/loz3v . Don't do that outdoors though, unless you can find ways to avoid the injuries from no-contact grappling on hard surfaces.

That might be safer than full contact, but hardly seems safe. Well within cough/sneeze range.

We're not actually doing that of course, all training is canceled.

Significant risk. Stay home and wash your hands regularly.

Much like this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg