We don’t know when the doors will open. It’s reasonably certain they won’t “fly” open.
If the coronavirus continues to be a major threat for the next year or two, which is well within the realm of possibility, we don’t know what society or the economy will look like after.
Worse, we don’t know that there is an after. It’s possible there is no effective and safe vaccine, and that social distancing becomes a permanent feature of life.
> Worse, we don’t know that there is an after. It’s possible there is no effective and safe vaccine, and that social distancing becomes a permanent feature of life.
Ok, deep breaths. We know that the disease triggers antibody response, we know basically nobody has become re-infected. That means herd immunity is very much in the cards -- and that vaccination is in the cards. So, there is an end-point, when some 70% of the population has it or has been vaccinated.
Next, week now that something like 0.5-9% of people who go to the hospital with severe symptoms of COVID then die (depending heavily, heavily on their age [4]), which means, 99.5%-91% of people with severe symptoms don't die. Now, there's a massive pile of people who show no symptoms at all, and another massive pile of people who show mild flu-like symptoms. This could represent 86% of all cases based on an earlier study [3]. The morality rate is much much lower than the numbers we're seeing because of adverse selection bias. If you only sample the people walking into hospital because they're sick, of course, they're much more likely to die than people who didn't go to the hospital.
This disease is worse than the flu, but not massively worse than the flu especially when you consider the flu kills 646,000 people each and every year worldwide (in spite of vaccinations being broadly available) [2] and this pandemic just crossed 95K -- and somehow we manage not to shut down the world because of the flu.
What that means is that we should respond about the same way we do to COVID as we do to the flu in steady-state conditions. There's no world in which social distancing, either via disease elimination, via vaccination program or via herd immunity, remains a part of our lives forever as a result of COVID.
> We don’t know when the doors will open. It’s reasonably certain they won’t “fly” open.
That was not the case in China where much of the economy is recovering judging from NO2 emissions from satellite imagery.
It's also not the case in Sweden where they aren't shutting down the economy for COVID. "Although herd immunity is not the official strategy, some officials maintain that there is no other conceivable way to stop the epidemic, praising the original British strategy that the United Kingdom later backed away from." [1]
And how's that working out for Sweden? 20x death rate to date compared to neighboring Finland which has a lockdown in place, and an ever accelerating rate of infected. Cool, cool.
Also China today is nothing like China pre-covid. Mandatory mask wearing everywhere, temperature checks every few blocks, in every shop, mobile codes to scan certifying your virus free status before being allowed to buy anything. They're not exactly planning their next Disneyland trips over there.
Sweden's deaths per 10M population is currently sitting at 778. That's lower than than the UK (1,202), France (1,825), Italy (3,024), Spain (3,306) and Switzerland (1,113), just to name a handful. Finland has not even administered enough tests to know what's what.
Your comments about China are more hyperbole. What I've found most interesting during this entire event is how many people desperately want to convince themselves and others that we're facing certain doom. It's really quite bizarre.
Schneier's essay follow-up on a post-9/11 world really crystalized my thinking on what's happening here [1]. I think this quote was particularly poignant:
"We're bad at accurately assessing risk; we tend to exaggerate spectacular, strange, and rare events, and downplay ordinary, familiar, and common ones. This leads us to believe that violence against police, school shootings, and terrorist attacks are more common and more deadly than they actually are—and that the costs, dangers, and risks of a militarized police, a school system without flexibility, and a surveillance state without privacy are less than they really are."
Or in this case, that COVID is much more fatal, devastating and terrifying than it really is, while the flu is much more tame and approachable -- and that we should spare literally no expense in the world to prevent it. Even though of course the flu kills 650,000 people each and every year, year after year. We're just used to it so we pay it no mind.
What we're seeing is less a pandemic (although of course it is one) and more a bug in human psychology on a massive never-before-seen scale.
I think Schneier is speaking about our memories of events in retrospect, however. Spectacular, strange and rare events are more punctuated in our memories, and therefore take up more of our mind share when reflecting on the past.
What's going on now, in the moment, seems to be something different. I keep hearing people taking minor news stories and blowing them up into apocalyptic scenarios like they WANT them to be true. As an example, there was a story a few days ago about how some tigers at the Bronx Zoo were infected. The next day, I overheard some people talking about how Covid19 is now infecting pets and there are animals spreading it in the streets of NY. Nearly every day I'm hearing things like this. Go look at the trending movies on Netflix - every one of them has to do with pandemics or the world ending. People want to fantasize about these realities. Why is that? It has to be some kind of coping mechanism. Is this an expression of society's deep discontent with the way things are and a desire to see it all come down? Whatever it is, for some reason, imagining the worst case scenario decreases pain/increases pleasure for a lot of people. It's fascinating.
That's a great article, thanks for sharing. I definitely agree that life seems easier in a post-apocalyptic scenario in the same way that re-writing some software from scratch is easier than just fixing it :P i.e. it seems that way now, but definitely isn't when you get there. However, having it as a waypoint marker sure is comforting.
> What we're seeing is less a pandemic (although of course it is one) and more a bug in human psychology on a massive never-before-seen scale.
That's debatable. Great Britain and Netherlands in the beginning wanted to simply let it go and use a "herd immunity" strategy, but changed track quickly after seeing how ICUs were overloaded in Italy and Spain. I've never heard ICUs being overloaded and medical resources being stretched to their limits during the flu season... Could you explain why? Isn't a great difference that we have flu vaccines but no known cure for COVID-19 yet?
> ...but changed track quickly after seeing how ICUs were overloaded in Italy and Spain.
Are you sure it wasn't public push-back?
> I've never heard ICUs being overloaded and medical resources being stretched to their limits during the flu season... Could you explain why?
There's never a whole lot of excess medical capacity since medical capacity is, you know, expensive. The disease burden of the flu is high. The US alone sees 45,000,000 flu infections each year. Having two diseases with the burden of the flu is double high, but it's not a reason to stop the world.
> Isn't a great difference that we have flu vaccines but no known cure for COVID-19 yet?
Yep, sure is. That said, COVID has shown so far to exhibit very little mutation. Globally the delta between viruses is about 15 base pairs. This means a single vaccine (or single infection leading to immunity) may be all we need. [1] The flu mutates regularly and different strains make it out each season which is why the flu vaccine needs to be given each year and why it's different each year. Flu vaccines are much less effective (19-60% [2]) for those reasons than, for instance, an MMR vaccine.
> And how's that working out for Sweden? 20x death rate to date compared to neighboring Finland which has a lockdown in place, and an ever accelerating rate of infected. Cool, cool.
Think about it: if you allow it to spread, then yes, you will see people die. The same is true of the flu, which has so far killed more people in the same period of time than COVID has according to the CDC -- in every age category [5].
I bet flu deaths are plummeting in Finland, too. I bet you anything that Sweden has 20X the death rate from the flu as compared to Finland and Denmark. Because nothing spreads when you're locked in. But it would be absurd to lock everyone inside because of the flu right? It's a question of risk management not risk elimination. [1]
And they're quite right, that they will be safe from a second wave as no other country will.
So, to answer you question, it's working out well.
> Also China today is nothing like China pre-covid. Mandatory mask wearing everywhere, temperature checks every few blocks, in every shop, mobile codes to scan certifying your virus free status before being allowed to buy anything. They're not exactly planning their next Disneyland trips over there.
1. They wore masks anyways due to the pollution ([2] this photo is from 2013 not 2020).
2. They had police/army stops anyways due to the PRC government being totalitarian. [3]
3. They have actually re-opened Shanghai Disneyland, as of March 9th. [4]
I don't have a good sense on the other points but I would point out the points about China are not quite right.
1. This is untrue. Masks were worn intermittently only on "bad pollution" days in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Inland cities like Chengdu there is not widespread mask usage.
2. There is a difference between Xinjiang and the rest of China. You definitively do not see this type of security checkpoints in "regular" pre-covid China.
China is not back to "normal", there is fits and starts in the restarts to life, and there is also a psychological drag on consumer demand even though some shopping is reopened.
1. I think it's fair to say every day is a bad pollution day in Beijing haha. I've seen the PM counts. With that in mind, of course, I've no reason to doubt you.
2. Sure, it varies.
I didn't mean to imply it was back to 100%, just that it was pointed in the right direction again.
Which makes the flu look comparatively worse than COVID since the flu stats include widespread vaccination campaigns. For what it's worth the flu vaccine efficacy ranges from 19-60% (unlike or instance an MMR which will get you 88-97%) because there are a lot of strains of the flu (and which one is dominant in a given season varies) and it mutates regularly. COVID has shown no mutation so far (I believe the delta between viruses across the world is 15 base pairs) so a herd immunity or immunization strategy will be much, much more effective.
If the coronavirus continues to be a major threat for the next year or two, which is well within the realm of possibility, we don’t know what society or the economy will look like after.
Worse, we don’t know that there is an after. It’s possible there is no effective and safe vaccine, and that social distancing becomes a permanent feature of life.