Thanks for making your model explicit. See my comment here. Basically, the crux is that if there is going to be global spread, it could be that the final mortality is independent of short-term actions. It would be great for an epidemiologist to weigh in.
I agree. I think there’s a reasonable shot that short-term action will have substantial effect on final mortality, because one of the following may happen:
3. We can flatten the disease spread curve enough that the peak hospital usage is less bad. 4. The disease mysteriously dies in the summer like every other flu or coronavirus. 5. Vaccines or good protocols are developed. 6. This gets under control due to a concerted public health efforts (as appears to have happened in China)
1. Good point 2. Without sustained protective measures, we only get herd immunity after a certain number get infected, roughly 50% for R0 = 2. So I don’t think short-term measures alone (e.g. earlier travel or event banning) would impact this. 3. Again, you need sustained efforts, not just a difference in short-term effort to flatten the curve. 4. Good point 5. Without 4, it appears that the outbreak would have already peaked by the time we develop, test, and scale up a vaccine 6. This is possible, but most think other countries will not take as extreme measures
So overall, this does give significant probability that short-term actions could have high impact, so they do look worth doing.
I can’t imagine having local events (or CEA hosting EA Global in SF) in April unless the curve seriously flattens or this turns out to be a false alarm.
Thanks for making your model explicit. See my comment here. Basically, the crux is that if there is going to be global spread, it could be that the final mortality is independent of short-term actions. It would be great for an epidemiologist to weigh in.
I agree. I think there’s a reasonable shot that short-term action will have substantial effect on final mortality, because one of the following may happen:
1. The disease mutates to much less virulent strain (like H1N1/​09 did) https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Pandemic_H1N1/​​09_virus2. So many people get it that we develop herd immunity.
3. We can flatten the disease spread curve enough that the peak hospital usage is less bad.
4. The disease mysteriously dies in the summer like every other flu or coronavirus.
5. Vaccines or good protocols are developed.
6. This gets under control due to a concerted public health efforts (as appears to have happened in China)
1. Good point
2. Without sustained protective measures, we only get herd immunity after a certain number get infected, roughly 50% for R0 = 2. So I don’t think short-term measures alone (e.g. earlier travel or event banning) would impact this.
3. Again, you need sustained efforts, not just a difference in short-term effort to flatten the curve.
4. Good point
5. Without 4, it appears that the outbreak would have already peaked by the time we develop, test, and scale up a vaccine
6. This is possible, but most think other countries will not take as extreme measures
So overall, this does give significant probability that short-term actions could have high impact, so they do look worth doing.
How short-term is short-term? I can imagine a world where we don’t do in-person EA meetups for a year, for example (and also if things look bad, I might self-isolate for multiple months). Also it looks like very serious efforts do decrease the doubling time a lot: https://​​ourworldindata.org/​​coronavirus#what-we-do-know-the-doubling-time-of-known-cases
I was thinking of short term as weeks, e.g. canceling events in March instead of waiting until April to cancel events from then on.
I can’t imagine having local events (or CEA hosting EA Global in SF) in April unless the curve seriously flattens or this turns out to be a false alarm.
Edited for clarity.