Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science
by throwaway894345 on Monday June 08, 2020 @08:26PM
(#23462323)
It's not at all clear to me how much more limiting the isolation required for the 1% is than the current quarantine measures. I certainly doubt that it means "no contact at all". It's also not clear to me that a very strict isolation for the 1% is overall better than a moderately strict "quarantine" for the remainder (trolley problem). It's also not sustainable to maintain quarantine indefinitely, and the economic ramifications alone will compound (exponential--not linear--decay). At some point, "quarantine" becomes a net negative for the vulnerable 1%, never mind the remainder. Further, as so many things do, these economic impacts are and will continue to be the most severe among the most economically vulnerable. It's certainly sustainable for 1% of people to isolate indefinitely; it's not sustainable at all for the rest of society to quarantine indefinitely and that sustainability falls off earlier for the most marginalized communities than it does for the rest of us.
To protect 90%, it's sufficient if you reduce the rate of spread below 1, which means that it's sufficient to have a (realistically achievable) "quarantine" that reduces the number of contacts 3-4 times. It's possible to have much less contact with people, it's very limiting to have no contact at all.
There's a huge world of difference between the contact limitations required for a true quarantine (essentially, zero contact) and what "lockdown" has meant in most places, with most people continuing to work with other people just with much less contact.