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Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

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Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#101

Post by ceejayoz »

o-__-o wrote: post #71
logicallee wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the data is invalid. We'll find out soon enough, there are millions of test kits being made available soon.

I dont understand what millions of millions of test kits will do. I’m not going to get tested because I have no symptoms. If I had symptoms I would stay in lockdown until it got worse. I don’t see rationale for anyone going to get tested just because (and based on some of the photos from drive through testing, a very easy way to contract COVID yourself)

What if you're an asymptomatic carrier?

The drive-through test sites are pretty well thought out. You're not likely to get the virus from the car in front of you.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#102

Post by orangecat »

Terretta wrote: post #59
fiblye wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries have week-long holidays where most people go home/travel/don't work. Their economies aren't dead. Make it a tradition where everyone with non-essential work stays home at least one week a year, all at the same time. More time is better, but even a little bit would likely cut back on disease. Governments already define Christmas/New Years/etc as a holidays and huge numbers of people aren't working on th…

In Europe this is called "August".

In Europe this is called "August".

But without the social distancing aspect.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#103

Post by scrollaway »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #75
scrollaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "car accidents" fallacy. 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day. Furthermore, car accidents kill an insane amount of people, and cars suck. This is not the bar.

Once covid-19/sars-cov-2 is over would you support the same levels of lockdown for car accidents and flu/viral pneumonia? Many more lives could be saved with the same political will and public support you find on this issue. These lockdowns can clearly prevent the spread of existing diseases and save magnitudes more lives as presented by the article along with the inevitable traffic statistics to come out showing the…

I wouldn't justify a lockdown for cars because there are other ways to beat cars than locking everyone in their homes.

Point: I don't have a car, yet I'm locked in my home right now. Hmmmmm.

And yes, I would support forbidding cars altogether for most things they're used for today that can be done with different vehicles.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#104

Post by closeparen »

zzleeper wrote: post #68
mrfusion wrote: post #49

Influenza only has an R0 of 1.3. I really wonder if we’ve managed to push it below 1.0 world wide. Pretty wild to think about. 1.3 really isn’t that much. What if all the new people who’ve started washing their hands keeps it below 1.0?

Sadly, as long as there's a large enough region where it has R0 > 1, then when we lift restrictions we'll be back to normal.

Or a species. Viruses aren’t just for humans.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#105

Post by op00to »

o-__-o wrote: post #73
Robotbeat wrote: post #43

I've noticed this anecdotally. My son usually goes to preschool (and Sunday school and playdates and museums and parks). He has had an almost constant runny nose for a while... as soon as one virus is fought off, another takes its place. Nothing major, but clearly annoying to him (cheek red due to him wiping his nose, in spite of our efforts to keep his face clean). A few days to a week after soft-quarantine (school…

This also means your little one is not getting that community immunity. You want your little one to get sick at a young age to ward of invaders as they get older. Anecdote: my niece gets sick badly and passes it on to everyone in her house at least every other month. She does not got to daycare. My LO does go to daycare and comes home with a new mild sickness once every third week and is fine a few days later. I’m in…

Childrens immune systems are challenged quite effectively with normal everyday exposure. You don’t need to feel symptoms to build immunity.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#106

Post by scrollaway »

clairity wrote: post #98
scrollaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "car accidents" fallacy. 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day. Furthermore, car accidents kill an insane amount of people, and cars suck. This is not the bar.

the fallacy is couching it that way. no one says “it’s harmless!”, but rather, they ask “is this more or less dangerous, and is it more or less costly?” so it’s absolutely a credible gauge of risk, or more colloquially, a bar. that’s how we figure out an appropriate response, by looking at what we’ve done in similar situations. and yes, it absolutely sucks that we accept a million deaths a year worldwide due to cars.…

I don't think it's a good gauge, because established variables are never evaluated the same way as new variables.

This is true in many fields. For example, if you said 30 years ago that everyone should carry all the counter-privacy implications of a smartphone in their pockets at all times, how do you think people would react?

Is it reasonable to expect people to freak out en masse about it today? No it's not. Why is a bigger question but i suspect you instinctively know that I'm correct here.

Does that mean smartphones are a net good on privacy? No. The negatives still exist even if people accept them.

Does that mean the negatives outweigh the good, and we should all throw away our smartphones? No, I don't think so either. The positives are massive. But introducing them today would give us the opportunity to address the privacy issues ahead of time.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#107

Post by op00to »

o-__-o wrote: post #73
Robotbeat wrote: post #43

I've noticed this anecdotally. My son usually goes to preschool (and Sunday school and playdates and museums and parks). He has had an almost constant runny nose for a while... as soon as one virus is fought off, another takes its place. Nothing major, but clearly annoying to him (cheek red due to him wiping his nose, in spite of our efforts to keep his face clean). A few days to a week after soft-quarantine (school…

This also means your little one is not getting that community immunity. You want your little one to get sick at a young age to ward of invaders as they get older. Anecdote: my niece gets sick badly and passes it on to everyone in her house at least every other month. She does not got to daycare. My LO does go to daycare and comes home with a new mild sickness once every third week and is fine a few days later. I’m in…

I could say the opposite. My son was sick 3 times prior to entering school, we took care of him at home until age 5. Each resolved in a day or so. Upon attending school, he’s got his share of colds and a fever or two, and clears them out quickly.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#108

Post by _ea1k »

zaroth wrote: post #92
sudoaza wrote: post #4

I was hoping for this, lets do social distancing a tradition for every winter

I’m just trying to get my head around this... I wonder if people are just ignorant of the widespread devastation caused by the lockdown, if they feel like people devastated by the lockdown did not “do enough to prepare” and so somehow deserve it, if they somehow believe people will be made whole by trillion dollar handouts, or what? I personally know two family businesses which have laid off all their employees and m…

Yeah, I'm seeing layoffs in sectors that I never would have expected to see layoffs. Its amazingly bad for everyone.

But don't worry, the government is here to save everyone! /s

We're definitely not volunteering for this every year.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#109

Post by sroussey »

eunos wrote: post #51
sudoaza wrote: post #4

I was hoping for this, lets do social distancing a tradition for every winter

Even easier and also reliable, normalize wearing surgical masks. Outside of Asia, wearing a surgical mask before the outbreak might invite some funny looks.

Why? I mean, sounds good if you are sick, but rather you stay home.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#110

Post by nullc »

andreygrehov wrote: post #94

Randall Munroe did a small section on eradicating the common cold in his What-if book, the basic idea is if that all of humanity stayed away from each other for a week or two then the common cold would die out as it can't survive outside of the human body for more than a week and normally survives by continuously hopping from host to host.

Do we know for sure that it* doesn't have an animal reservoir?

[*] The common cold is a half dozen distinct viruses.

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