Why extended social distancing matters

As my first post pointed out this is a matter of numbers. One of those is number of contacts. This is the more important number, but the number of days or weeks or months matters too. The chain reaction of contacts needs to die out before it’s safe. This will ramp up rapidly if we lose focus. Almost isn’t anywhere near good enough in this case.

There is pain, mentally and yes, financially. It makes sense to endure a little more of the financial pain now than to prolong this. When this ends, and it will, demand will resume and the economy will rebound. But if we let the virus run rampant with foolish policies that encourage people to mingle, the rebound will be slower and lower. The more people who die, the more who become seriously ill, the greater the drain on the resources we will need to recover.

This can seem hard. People by nature interact. We like the habits we’ve developed. And there isn’t a visible tangible threat. The world isn’t devastated, at least not yet. But if a significant number of people die or become disabled some slow moving devastation will occur. Things will look different and fixing things will take longer. Some things, some institutions, will slowly decay because the human resources needed to maintain them aren’t available.

We can get through this, but we really need to prioritize societal well being over financial. History tells us over and over that societal collapse lasts far longer than financial. We need to think about what will really need to protect for future generations.