by the time when you want to go into isolation based on timeline-of-the-illness considerations, so few people in your community will be infected that it seems too early.
How few? Ten confirmed cases? A hundred? Does it depend on the size or density of the community?
The way I thought about it, I started to take risks somewhat seriously by the time 1 in 1000 in my neighborhood might be infected (and then realized that this was already pushing it with the timing-of-illness considerations!). If you’re in a country where testing is very diligent, then diagnosed cases might be 12% of actual cases. If you’re in the US, it’s 5% at best. It’s also important to know when countries switch from a policy of testing everyone who might plausibly have the disease (if they ever had such a policy) to a policy of only testing people with pre-existing health conditions or severe symptoms. In the latter case, estimating the progression of the outbreak from past doubling times might be better than just continuing to follow the numbers. (Although, scarily enough, the numbers might continue to grow similarly fast even after this switch of policy.) I used 3.5 days as the doubling time initially, but I think that’s what led to me being a bit late despite the intention of wanting to be comfortably early. Playing it safe, I think 2.5 days might be better. Of course, things might change especially once governments start shutting down a lot of things.
A friend also gave me good advice about not going to the grocery store I usually go to, because she realized that it was right next door of one of London’s larger hospitals. That was a useful protection measure 20 days ago already.
How few? Ten confirmed cases? A hundred? Does it depend on the size or density of the community?
The way I thought about it, I started to take risks somewhat seriously by the time 1 in 1000 in my neighborhood might be infected (and then realized that this was already pushing it with the timing-of-illness considerations!). If you’re in a country where testing is very diligent, then diagnosed cases might be 12% of actual cases. If you’re in the US, it’s 5% at best. It’s also important to know when countries switch from a policy of testing everyone who might plausibly have the disease (if they ever had such a policy) to a policy of only testing people with pre-existing health conditions or severe symptoms. In the latter case, estimating the progression of the outbreak from past doubling times might be better than just continuing to follow the numbers. (Although, scarily enough, the numbers might continue to grow similarly fast even after this switch of policy.) I used 3.5 days as the doubling time initially, but I think that’s what led to me being a bit late despite the intention of wanting to be comfortably early. Playing it safe, I think 2.5 days might be better. Of course, things might change especially once governments start shutting down a lot of things.
A friend also gave me good advice about not going to the grocery store I usually go to, because she realized that it was right next door of one of London’s larger hospitals. That was a useful protection measure 20 days ago already.