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I don't think it's obvious at all that everyone will get it, especially now that so many people are practicing social distancing and handwashing and avoiding ga
by ksdale 7y ago
I don't think it's obvious at all that everyone will get it, especially now that so many people are practicing social distancing and handwashing and avoiding gatherings. Yes, there are still a lot of people going about their lives without worry, but it seems totally plausible to me that if some percentage of people behave more responsibly, it will decrease R0 to some number below 1.
I think using simple exponential numbers to predict future cases is too simplistic if we don't take into account how people's changing behavior will affect the spread.
- irrational 7y agoI guess it depends on where you live. In the city where I live I have seen absolutely 0 changes in behavior. All gatherings are going on as normal, no special social distancing. There are lots of jokes about it (we probably shouldn't shake hands, ha ha! [still shake hands]), but nobody is actually doing anything differently.
- ksdale 7y agoI've seen that same thing! But I live about an hour away from Seattle, and I'm generally seeing way fewer people shake hands and several people I know (my family included) are avoiding unnecessary trips into public. I mostly just wonder where the threshold is between population density and social distancing and R0. Obviously total quarantine does wonders, and completely normal behavior is terrible, but is it enough if half the population takes precautions? Or 2/3 or 1/3? I've been thinking of it kind of like a graph or a web, and if you cut enough of the connections, the spread stops, and "enough" isn't anything like "all," and the more strategically placed the cuts are, the fewer there can be, but it's not easy to figure out exactly how many cuts you need.