This is why it's so important to stay home if you don't have to go out to keep society functioning. No country can enforce a 100% lockdown because many folks have to go out there and do their jobs if we all want to stay alive. Staying home if it's at all possible for you to do so helps to reduce the risk for these people who don't have the option.
Pandemic is a big-picture word. The average family will be far more affected by the results of serious people taking things too seriously than they will by the virus itself. The reason my neighbor can't go to the store and buy TP has nothing to do with the specifics of an illness and everything to do with over-serious, poorly-calibrated perceptions. (Downvote away, but that doesn't change the world condition)
To the contrary, regular non-joking, totally serious people still call it Chinese flu, bird flu, I've even heard bat flu, probably some others. I think you are forgetting common lack of awareness / ignorance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_flu
https://extra.ie/2020/01/18/news/irish-news/new-chinese-flu-...
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/wuhan-flu-how-to-protect-f...
You can see why--a lot of media sites like the one above still show their original URL even though the titles have been changed.
I would imagine their risk of contracting the disease is much lower than majority of people.
If they would be asked to stop performing their job it would be to be with solidarity with the rest of people. It's not like the air is poisoned.
If after couple of days your stores are still empty of most staples, it suggests some serious problems higher up in the supply chain.
If groceries aren't back to normal in a week, I can easily see state troopers mobilized to guard every supermarket and make sure nobody buys twenty boxes of Bounty. Yes, it would look silly and would grate the nerve of free market enthusiasts, but in an emergency you go for effectiveness, not prettiness.
On the other hand, nobody's gonna die from the lack of a haircut anytime soon. Lots of people (myself included) can work remote.
Even at a 2 - 4% mortality rate, the sheer panic over this is nonsense
I must say in Seattle it’s a little alarming to go to the store and to literally see no meat, no bread, no milk, no soap. And I’ve already had friends in hospitality lose their jobs.
I think the UK’s keep calm and carry on approach is the right way - but it’s hard to turn back from a panic.
I don't see that works, people will riot.
Start getting unemployment now before that system becomes overwhelmed. I am not optimistic for state and local government to implement remote work.
The fear is that if the health system collapses the mortality rate could be even higher.
Beyond that, while it's unrealistic to immediately eliminate all mixing of people, you can vastly reduce it, and it makes a difference. That's the point of #StayTheFuckHome. Much less people on public transit, much less people in stores means much slower spread of the virus.
In Italy-- which has more somewhat more ICU beds per capita than the US does and is a about 1.5 weeks ahead of the bay area in progression-- the current CFR is 6.8% (which is likely an underestimate because exponential growth means that most people who are diagnosed haven't been infected long enough to have died yet) and the resolved CFR is 43% (which is likely an overestimate, in part because people are dying faster than they are recovering in Italy now because they're going untreated). [NOTE: CFR is not IFR, and the CDC analysis uses CFR and separately accounts for the fact that only a small portion of infections result in hospitalizations]
The best way to mitigate economic effects is to act stronger earlier, exponential growth means that little improvements earlier are more impactful than vastly more aggressive measures later.
After halting big public events, bars closures have probably some of the best ratios of reduced communicability to economic harm, especially given the data showing that young people are carriers are much higher rates than older populations.
Many people's informal observations that even last night many bars were very busy. I keep hearing from younger people that if it were an issue 'they' would close down and so concern must be over-hyped. This perception makes it more important to take stronger measures.
Example: For the few hours after announcing, the « McDonnalds » hashtag was trending. Which says a lot.
Given the sheer amount of disrupted sectors, I wonder if it wouldn't be best if government doing lockdowns simply bit the bullet and enacted UBI.
I don't know of any studies but I can't imagine anywhere near that much dieing from the economy slowing down.
I know our grocery stores only average about 1 day worth of supplies in stock, plus 1 day of food at home, then it all kind of goes to shit?
From a country's POV, the stability of food production and delivery to stores is critical. Fortunately, both Italy and Wuhan prove that it can be maintained during lockdown.
I would not be surprised if the death toll from the ensuing recession is higher than from covid deaths. That begs the obvious question, since covid kills mostly old people, but the recession kills mostly young, which is better?
Overloaded hospitals due to covid would also cause secondary deaths.
Ignoring that, the number will be higher than 100,000 if per the CDC nearly all Americans will be exposed
And 100k seems high for 2 some odd million people losing health insurance for a couple of years.
i.e. if we can prevent collapse and it "only" requires a few tens of thousands of deaths, is that worthwhile?
Obviously, as many as would've been caused directly by said economic collapse, minus one.
The reason you can't easily do such math is because it's never a binary choice. It's not a trolley problem with an obvious solution. You can choose to sacrifice the economy to save a thousand lives for each ten thousand predicted lost to the economic downturn, and then do your best to reduce the lives lost due to economic damage. Perhaps you'll reduce that 10 000 to just 500, and then history will say it was worth it.
Bars and restaurants are not necessary, and keeping them open encourages the less cautious members of the public to go out when they really shouldn't be.
> Mail, truck delivery, etc. can operate with relatively little person to person contact...
That's like two orders of magnitude away from bars and restaurants, where you're deliberately placed single digit ft away from everybody else.
On top of this, I believe current science says that covid-19 survives extremely poorly on most surfaces for the periods of time that are involved with storage + shipping.