Debated posting this… I don’t want to just jump on the current topic of interest, but I’m seeing so many idiots around that I wanted to say something.

tl:dr (and in case anyone misunderstands the thought experiment below) - Self-isolate. Doing anything else is being a selfish idiot.

Oh and IANAE (I am not an epidemiologist) so don’t take this as expert advice.

We are in unusual times. The current pandemic at the time of writing has caused a minimum of 24000 deaths worldwide. Governments around the world are mostly getting past the denial phase and entering lockdown mode. We (in the UK anyway) are being told to stay inside, don’t meet up with others, limit exposure as much as possible. Why are the draconian rules (now law) required? Because as a population we are basically morons - we instinctively live in denial ‘I’ll be fine’ or ‘I’m not likely to catch it’ or ‘Yeah, but I’m bored and want to go see my mates’…

Another part is how some of us react to fear and uncertainty - we don’t know when we’re going to get infected, and we don’t know how serious the results of the infection are going to be. Also, we don’t know who we could be infecting while we’re wandering around pre-symptomatic. Some of us (myself included) instinctively want to face down that fear immediately ‘**** it, let’s get it over with. Let’s get sick and be done with it’. Let me go through the logic of why that’s a really bad idea.

Best case - perfect quarantine, mild symptoms

Lets say hypothetically it was possible to get infected with absolute certainty at a time of your choosing. You prep your home for 7-14 days quarantine (depending on whether you live alone or not). You’ve got supplies to last, so you go out and get coughed on. Best case, everyone in your household has a miserable week, and you emerge afterwards immune - you’re invincible. You can’t infect others with your coughs and sneezes… you’re safe. Except…

  • Even if you’ve had it once, there is no absolute guarantee you’re immune from getting it again. Your immune system has been activated to this particular virus so reinfection is highly unlikely in the short term, but there has been at least one report in Wuhan of someone getting reinfected.

  • Even if you are now immune, you can still spread the virus. Even if your body isn’t manufacturing it, you can still spread it around from and to others by touch.

Imperfect quarantine, mild symptoms

  • What if you make a mistake in your quarantine? Someone nearby gets infected because of you. Say they don’t get so lucky with the symptoms, or the people they subsequently infect, and so on. I have elderly neighbours that I intentionally haven’t seen for weeks because I don’t want to risk killing them.

Serious symptoms

There’s no guarantee it’ll just be a flu. Current stats puts the mortality risk for my age group at 0.5-1%, and even healthy, young folk have reportedly died from it. Am I willing to intentionally find out? If there were no knock on effects, actually maybe. However, it has substantial knock on effects on others.

  • Even if you are fine, is everyone in your household likely to be so lucky? Your partner, your kids - do any of them have any health issues that would increase their risk of complications? That’s not a risk you can take on their behalf.

  • Even if it was just me, I risk being hospitalised. Even if I survived, I would have been using up resources and medic time that could have been used to save someone else’s life. I don’t want that on my conscience. Even testing in the case of mild symptoms is using up time and resources we don’t currently have to spare.

In summary, the current lockdown we are experiencing is necessary and rational. You should be doing all you can to abide by it. To do anything else is to be a self-centred moron. Unfortunately, there are still far too many of those around. The fact that it had to become enforceable law (and recent news reports) demonstrates just how stupid some of the people living here can be.

Shared at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/self-isolation-just-do-donal-stewart