I posted in to the EA forum, and have now crossposted that to Lesswrong. (I clearly overestimated the proportion of people who read both.)
Regarding transmission reduction from handwashing, two points. First, reducing R0 flattens the curve in ways that make the epidemic far more manageable for emergency services, saving lives. Second, prior to any social distancing, the R_0 was far higher than it is when we have the growing norms around reduced hand-contact, etc., which could very plausibly combine to push R0 far closer to 1.
I posted in to the EA forum, and have now crossposted that to Lesswrong. (I clearly overestimated the proportion of people who read both.)
Regarding transmission reduction from handwashing, two points. First, reducing R0 flattens the curve in ways that make the epidemic far more manageable for emergency services, saving lives. Second, prior to any social distancing, the R_0 was far higher than it is when we have the growing norms around reduced hand-contact, etc., which could very plausibly combine to push R0 far closer to 1.