Coronavirus and Credibility

> For a simplified example just compare the cost of taking actions that make you break the curve 4 days too early with the situation where you break the curve 4 days too late

But does it seem that implausible that cooler heads might find a solution that doesn't cost at least $20 trillion?

Covid-19 in China: 0.50-0.66% mortality [2, 3]

I mean from numbers it is indeed not much worse than flu, but we don't know the potential extra deaths caused by running out of ICU beds.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

[2] https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327

[3] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v...

In my country, The Netherlands, for the most part people didn't really seem to take things seriously, even when our PM told us to. All the same kinds of talking points (similar to flu, lots of people die from car accidents, etc.).

And so in the first weekend, with some restrictions already in place and Italy being in deep trouble, we all went to sit in parks and socialize like nothing was wrong.

It was only the week after that things changed. The government didn't suddenly enforce a full-on lockdown, but rather it was a combination of 1) our PM imploring everyone to change their behavior, 2) partial social distancing measures that were noticeable (events cancelled, restaurants closed for anything but take-out/pick-up), and perhaps 3) a sinking-in of how bad things were going elsewhere.

I've been 'immersing' myself in how the media reports things, the political debates and press conferences, and the way my social circles and people on the streets respond, and so far my impression is that there are two crucial factors that have resulted in 'proper' behaviour around here, despite the great weather: First, as it becomes clear that actual things change (limited no. of people in a supermarket, restaurants closed, specific public spaces closed when necessary), people realize it's not just abstract, and 2) while we are an individualist, recalcitrant bunch, we do ultimately have a lot of trust in the expertise of our government (whether justified or not).

I'm very interested to see how things develop in the US, and quite concerned in particular when it comes to 2.

EDIT: I'll add that personally I think at least initially our government was way too laissez-faire about this, and probably more so than many other countries in Europe other than the UK (and Sweden?). Our PM was/is perhaps too torn between taking things seriously and keeping the economy going. Which I suppose is exactly what he should be doing as a center-right politician.

The issue of exponential growth is of relevance in response to those saying that the number of deaths (insert the inplicit 'so far' here) is much less than from infuenza (annually.) It is not a 'fixation' to expose the irrelevance of that line of thinking.

More generally, the issue is a combination of the facts that this virus is significantly more dangerous, for all age groups, than at least post- Spanish Flu infuenza; it is very readily transmitted; and there is no (or much less) herd immunity. When you combine these fact with the math of exponential growth, and have establshed the doubling rate, you can do some scientific prediction that goes beyond "so far it has not been as bad as the flu", which is true just so long as it is, and no longer. To do that, however, you have to hold more than one idea at a time in your head.