I think the thing is that shutting down all social gatherings requires coordination to work. If there are no large groups, COVID-19 can’t spread, dies, and you never have a pandemic. But if everyone else is meeting, and you don’t, you’ll just end up getting it from your wife, or a co-worker, or your neighbors or something. So you might as well hold the meeting if everyone else is going to be meeting.
What is unclear to me right now, and something I’m thinking about is whether countries and regions that don’t yet have internal spread should be shutting everything down to protect themselves, and I think the answer might be roughly the same—it might be worth it if everyone did it, but if the virus is going to survive somewhere no matter what you do, you might as well wait to shut down social events for your city and region until you actually need to, since you really, really don’t want to be in lock down longer than you absolutely need to.
I think the thing is that shutting down all social gatherings requires coordination to work. If there are no large groups, COVID-19 can’t spread, dies, and you never have a pandemic. But if everyone else is meeting, and you don’t, you’ll just end up getting it from your wife, or a co-worker, or your neighbors or something. So you might as well hold the meeting if everyone else is going to be meeting.
What is unclear to me right now, and something I’m thinking about is whether countries and regions that don’t yet have internal spread should be shutting everything down to protect themselves, and I think the answer might be roughly the same—it might be worth it if everyone did it, but if the virus is going to survive somewhere no matter what you do, you might as well wait to shut down social events for your city and region until you actually need to, since you really, really don’t want to be in lock down longer than you absolutely need to.