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

qz.com

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

#121

Post by tluyben2 »

MobileVet wrote: post #17

Just imagine how many fewer people would fall ill each year with the flu if we didn’t shake hands as our default greeting?

Yep, I never liked hand shaking because of that. Where I am currently (PT) and where I lived mostly before (ES) kissing is almost mandatory, even often with people you meet for the first time and will never meet again. I think it is the same in Italy & Greece.

I think the future might be better with a polite nod instead. But that is because I do not like this contact with just anyone (I did a lot of business travel and it is scary to see how few people wash their hands after doing whatever on the toilet). Obviously with friends/people you know well things are different; I am referring to contact with just anyone you meet.

Is there any research about infectious diseases and greetings? Especially handshaking, hugging (another one I could do without unless close friends) and kissing.

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

#122

Post by frank2 »

scrollaway wrote: post #103
ShorsHammer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you support forbidding cars in neighborhoods designed around the car, e.g., most American suburbs planned after 1950, or would you limit the ban to neighborhoods planned after the start of the ban?

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

#123

Post by ummonk »

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?

It should be noted that R0 won't be constant - the more people have it the lower the R0 since more people will have immunity and more of the extroverts / travelers (who are high R0) will have spread it around to each other already.

Also, of course, the R0 always goes below 1 in summer...

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

#124

Post by Izkata »

fiblye wrote: post #34
scrollaway wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think we're going to come out of this period causing people to lose their jobs, lose their savings, lose their loved ones, not see their friends, stop going to sports and social events… and everyone's going to be like "Hey, that was fun, let's do it again next year"?

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…

> Governments already define Christmas/New Years/etc as a holidays

Just doing the days between those two holidays would probably be a welcome reprieve for a lot of people.

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

#126

Post by dlivingston »

Exmoor wrote: post #96
stagas wrote: post #66

I am betting also driving and particularly drunk driving related accidents and deaths will also drop during this quarantine.

..And suicides will likely go way up. Probably a lot of other issues as well that may be more difficult to track. Mental health crisis, domestic violence, etc.

As you hint at, unemployment numbers are directly proportional to suicide rates. The effects of shutting down the world are much higher than just missed paychecks and business bankruptcies. You list a few of them.

There must be a cost-benefit analysis done where we find the breakeven point between lives saved by quarantine vs. lives damaged by quarantine side effects.

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

#127

Post by FpUser »

Well, the ultimate example of "social distancing" were tiny island nations. They got visited by Europeans, caught whatever bugs they brought and now they're all dead.

If you do not train your immune system it'll fail you. When we have some major epidemic with an ugly consequences coming then sure social distancing can help. However taking social distancing as a generic strategy for out future lives I think will lead to a major f.. up.

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

#128

Post by myself248 »

saalweachter wrote: post #113
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.

This current situation had me wondering how hard it would be to coordinate a regular -- maybe not yearly -- global self-isolation for say 2-3 weeks at a time. Aside from the difficulties of getting everyone in the world to agree that the first three weeks of February during a leap year are observed through social distance, it doesn't seem like it would be as bad on a recurring basis as it is during an emergency like…

I've theorized this about sexually transmitted diseases, too. It's even less realistic to imagine compliance, but suppose everyone only had sex with people who were born the same year as them. Any given disease would lose the ability to spread into younger people, and simply fall off the end of the age conveyor-belt.

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

#129

Post by fyfy18 »

maxerickson wrote: post #114
sroussey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lots of people, for lots of illnesses, are infectious without really having any symptoms.

Plus most people still go to work when sick. They will just dose up on whatever drugs they have to hide the symptoms and make them feel better, then go to work anyway. Even here in Europe where the government pays sick leave that happens.

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

#130

Post by fragmede »

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)

By the time you feeling symptomatic, our current understanding[0] is that you've been shedding the virus all over the damn place for the past 2-14 days[1], spreading germs everywhere you've been. By the time you feel sick, it's too late. It's spring, are you really going to self-isolate for 14 days just because you sneezed once? What sounds better, going to get tested, so you can know if it's a sneeze and you can go about your life, or self-isolate because of you sneezed once. During spring.

We failed at preparing for this. Let's not double down on failure.

[0] https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-c...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/s...

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