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> OK... but... isn't that what everyone is being advised to do right now?

No. What everyone is advised to do right now is not to withdraw from society, it's to perform basic hygiene and social distancing in order to slow down the spread. Social distancing doesn't mean living like a recluse eating spam cooked on a gas burner, it's not getting into large crowds and trying to stay some distance from other people (outside spitting / coughing range). WaPo has an article with a "social distancing" simulator: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-si...

"Self quarantining" is closer to what you're talking about, but it's for people who are at risk or likely to have been infected, not the general public.

Of course the latter you start the more it's already spread and the harsher measures have to be. And the more you'll have to ramp them up as you realise your initial measures were not sufficient, or your citizens have decided "freedom or death" is a good choice and decide to just ignore it.

FWIW Taiwan's already reopened its schools and life has gone back to something not entirely dissimilar to normal (people do have to wear masks and get their temperature checked to step into public buildings or businesses but they can move around just fine).

Plural anecdotes, but: most folks I’ve seen on social media, Reddit, friends very much have interpreted “social distancing” as withdrawing from society. On the NYC and coronavirus subreddits the consensus seems to be that you’re a selfish piece of garbage if you leave the house for any non-essential reason.

The bully pulpit is supremely important in these situations, and no government so far seems to have used it responsibly to disseminate a consistent message early enough to citizenry. Worse yet, in the US ones politics seems to be particularly predictive of opinion on coronavirus.

My current feeling is that the virus was not taken seriously when action could have mattered, and now the goal of government and citizenry is to reduce the carnage to both medically vulnerable folks (old people) and to economically vulnerable people. The latter risk in particular scares me, as there are many folks in the US who are going to be severely impacted by politicians reacting severely way too late who are too cowardly to protect those vulnerable people adequately.

Yes, but the UK does call far social distancing as much as any other place? And likely soon self-quarantine for 70+ and other risk groups.

I thought the UK (and Sweden, Finland etc) differed mostly in not closing schools yet. Are there other significant differences?

Until a day or so ago Boris Johnson advocated for a herd immunity when it was not proved to be true for Corona. So no, it did not call for same social distancing as other countries.

Herd immunity and social distancing aren't exclusive. You want both. Is it true that he called for no social distancing?

Is there a summary of the current recommendations? I mean surely gatherings etc are banned? Football is already cancelled, for example, as in other countries?

He didn’t do anything at all. Football was cancelled independently by the football league or whatever it is called some days later, boris was advocating for no action at all and even football and st Patrick parade where actively encouraged.

What are relevant UK authorities saying? Who’s at the wheel here, politicians or authorities/experts?

No, they said to do nothing different from normal at all, unless you are over 70 or you have cough. Guess who jumped from 10 deaths per day from yesterday to 14 per day today almost doubling the deads for two days in a row?

> No, they said to do nothing different from normal at al

What? That sounds insane

(Today's deathcount is of course dependent on policy from weeks ago tough)

It’s totally insane if you ask me.

I think the advisors rational is that we're mostly going to get it anyway so let the young get it and keep the old folk at home.

I think it's unwise for a few reasons, not least that if we delay we may have better treatments. Stuff like chloroquine and keltra seems to work but there haven't really been the proper studies - that sort of stuff shouldn't take that long. And there may be a vaccine. (China rushing vaccine stuff https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/china-coronavirus-va...)

> it's not getting into large crowds and trying to stay some distance from other people (outside spitting / coughing range)

...which presumes you don't live in a place with high-enough urban density that going outside your home immediately puts you into a large crowd.

Like, what are you supposed to do if you live in Manila? Mumbai? Dhaka?

Pretty much the only way to "practice social distancing" in those sorts of places is to never go outside.

No, it means don't go to football matches. Don't go to cinema. Don't go to a convention. Don't ride on a train for a leisure trip. That the distancing can't be done 100% perfectly does not mean that all distancing is worthless and therefore that NO distancing should even be attempted. Even slowing the spread of the illness may be worthwhile.

Don't go over to friends houses?

I am getting mixed messages, I'm not sure why I think asking for another opinion on the internet will help, but there it is.

you want to be a part of this effort? don't go.

Link to an established authority saying not to occasionally visit friends or you are spreading panic.

It's not that it's necessarily "spreading panic" but that "believe whoever you want on the internet" is not an effective public health communications strategy.

But that appears to be what we've got.

The shaming approach of "you want to be part of this effort?" (whatever that means) is unlikely to be an effective communications strategy either.

I don't know why I asked, I already had my choice of various opinions on the internet (usually given from a position of moral superiority and judgement).

I seriously don't understand why the U.S. public health infrastructure is failing so horribly here; if you want to maximize compliance, it seems obvious that you should be giving consistent and pervasive instructions, there should be literally a planned "marketting" campaign, with a consistent message. If people are getting different messages from different places of course they will be confused and compliance will be less.

Instead, we have "which chain letter on facebook and/or shaming and blaming comment on HN does my gut tell me seems right?" What the fuck America.

i'll clarify: the effort in question is to stop being a potential carrier of a novel disease for which nobody is immune for and thus has potential to put great many people in a hospital for weeks at a time putting strain onto a system which is hardly idle. you might catch the virus and probably won't be able to tell the difference from common cold or flu. somebody you meet might end up intubated and anesthesiologically paralyzed for a week. or dead.

so don't go if you don't want to be that person.

italian and spanish prime ministers good enough for you? don't have better at hand, sorry

Social distancing is just minimizing contact, not avoiding all contact (self-isolation/quarantining). E.g. try to go out for groceries once a week and pick a time to avoid the crowds.

> what are you supposed to do if you live in Manila? Mumbai? Dhaka?

Rejoice that you are with 99% certainty way under 70 years old.

Metro Manila, a region of 12 million people, entered a month-long lockdown on Sunday as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte considers a plan to impose a curfew on the area to try to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-15/manila-en...

Try not getting into a large crowd at any point of your commute into London!

Now may be the best time to try commuting by bike if you can.

I’m wfh for 1 week now and luckily before I wasn’t in London.

Works for me if you can find a suitably remote cabin and a stock of food etc :-)

The Norwegian government is prohibiting anyone from staying in cabins [0] because they fear it would overwhelm the small hospitals in rural areas and becomes harder to manage medical resources.

[0] https://www.thelocal.com/20200315/norwegians-told-to-leave-c...

But what about my Hacker News habit? Surely there is Wi-Fi…

I'd end up simulating my own HN on paper.

Maybe you can run the fakehn on-premise. At times of mass hysteria it's indistinguishable from the original.

Monte Carlo simulation or hidden Markov models?

My heuristic is to take a oversimplified idea and express it in an authoritative tone on social/economic/administrative topics. Sign the username with pg and you’re good.

If I noticed anything in the past months it is that it hardly matters if you are an expert. There never was punishment for being wrong for hypotheticals. People just don't know. The WHO when declaring emergency said: "We don't know the damage this virus can do". Even this week professors in statistics compare the Italy crisis to heart attacks and their models all fall apart within a week.

OK... but... isn't that what everyone is being advised to do right now?

Yes but that's expected to, uh, not work. It's only expected to slow the progression.

One of the frustrating and anxiety-producing things here is that we aren't getting very consistent messaging from the governmental authorities and experts.

The only sane course of action the extreme lockdown we are now seeing in many countries. But politicians, being gutless cowards, are coming up with other ideas until their hand forced ... I hope. The alternative of actually believe this stuff and sticking to it would horrific.

I mean, everyone should be definitely be isolating and doing everyone that they can to slow the infection. But we are going to need much stronger measures than individual action. This is a real war, not like drug or terrorism wars, OK.

>although the US government isn't actually telling us to... yet? But that's the alternative those who who think the UK's plan is madness are suggesting, right? Asking everyone to withdraw from society for months?

It doesn't take that much to contain something like this. In no particular order:

(1) Temperature checks outside all major gathering places. Shops, subways, offices, etc. If you're running a fever you don't get in.

(2) Hand sanitizer at the entrance/exit of all major gathering places. Clean your hands before you go in and clean them when you come out. Don't clean them you don't get in.

(3) Wear masks everywhere in major gathering places. No mask, no entry.

(4) Widespread testing and contact tracing for those who have tested positive.

I agree that the West in general is handling this as dumb as possible. Shutting everything down is pointless if you don't use the respite to enact public health measures.

It's estimated that as many as 20% of the infected are asymptomatic, including no fever. A lot of your suggestions would fail to contain the virus.

I do believe that widespread testing and tracing would be effective. Given that we don't yet have access to the scale of testing that is required to maintain public health, I think an immediate quarantine is the only way to save lives.

>t's estimated that as many as 20% of the infected are asymptomatic, including no fever. A lot of your suggestions would fail to contain the virus.

We don't need to stop 100% of the transmissions. Right now, on average, an infected person will pass it on to 2-3 people. The goal is to get that to below 1 and eventually it will fizzle out.

I'm not quite sure what's so controversial about my post. It's what countries in Asia have done and they've all contained the spread.

I've been trying for 3 weeks to get _a_ 8oz bottle of hand sanitizer. Good luck getting number 2 happening.

Manufacturing a hundred thousand 8-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer might be considerably easier than a hundred thousand times as difficult as getting a single one. I mean, have you tried distilling alcohol from fermented mash and mixing it with mucilage?

Given the choice between hand sanitizer and soap, always go for the soap.

It is more effective against viruses.

I wash with soap and water wherever I can. I want sanitizer for when I'm getting in the car after leaving stores and stuff.

Do what I did. eBay isopropyl alcohol and some vegetable glycerin. Should cost you less than 10GBP per litre and mix at a 70/30 ratio.

30% glycerol seems very high. The WHO publishes recipes for hand sanitizers with only 1.45% glycerol by volume:

https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf

Glycerin is not a very good thickening agent for this purpose, but if it's the only one you're using, you're going to need more than 1.45% of it.

If every place does temperature checks, how many will do it with a poor protocol that spreads virus?