Perhaps our social distancing has gone way too far

An understandable first reaction to the news of this virus is denial -- there isn't really any problem. Most people got over this quickly, and even Donald Trump seems to have finally moved past it.

The minimum sensible response to the COVID-19 outbreak is a "mitigation strategy", described as "combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease." I can't think of any reason we shouldn't be taking at least those measures.

The US quickly moved to a more radical social distancing strategy. One notable early example was shutting down US professional sports when one basketball player tested positive. Restrictions on travel and the banning of large gatherings have followed. Denial is gone, and there is a consensus that our temporary inconvenience is worth it if we can prevent a public health disaster.

And yet, here is a radical possibility: The world will be much better off in the long run if we do no more than mitigation. There were powerful forces against society taking this as an initial response. It seems callous regarding the immediate, visible problem of people dying from the virus. There is also a strong psychological tendency to say, "This is a serious problem. I want to do my part to help solve it. I'm willing to undergo major inconvenience to do my part." The answer, "Actually, it's best if you keep up your normal routine with a few small changes" doesn't sit so well. Yet this "back to life as usual" line of thinking might come into play as we consider how long we can keep this up.

The model where radical social distancing makes sense is one where we suffer now for a few months at most, we flatten the curve of infections so as not to overwhelm the public health system, and then we can resume our normal ways and pat ourselves on the back for doing what needed to be done. But a few months will not do it. <This report> out of the UK influenced recent US policy decisions and had a key conclusion: "The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) – given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed."

They determined that the basic mitigation strategies "might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over." That sounds bad, and considered by itself it is very bad, but it might be preferable when we consider the consequences to social distancing as we are now practicing it.

A huge problem with social distancing is the economic fallout. In normal times of economic slowdown, economists lament that a lack of consumer confidence is to blame for things not picking up again -- people's sense that tough times might lie ahead leads to spending less. And since one person's spending is another person's income, the economy stays weak. Consider how mild "reduced consumer confidence" is in comparison to what people see right now. A stock market having lost 30% of its value is one sort of wake-up call. But even if you figure that the stock market is a rich person's problem, one trip to your supermarket will tell you that this is a big deal -- the empty shelves are a result of your fellow citizens hoarding in expectation of hard times ahead. It takes no appreciation of fine points of economics to understand that air travel, tourism, hospitality, sports, and the restaurant business are immediately and drastically reduced. Those industries employ a lot of people who will be out of work, who will spend less, leading to other people out of work. From zero concern to deep concern in a mere two weeks, everyone knows that things are very bad for large segments of the economy. Talk about loss of consumer confidence! As always, hard economic times will hurt most the working poor and not-so-poor.

Those sectors are just the beginning. A remarkable amount of what we spend our time and money on is not strictly necessary. There's no real need to work out at the gym -- you can get back in shape later. Focusing just on how we present ourselves, who needs to get a nice haircut or their nails done? You can now restrict your clothing purchases to the practical and necessary and make them online. We do some of those things to "keep up with the Joneses", but quite likely the Joneses will be giving them up too. And if you stay home, no one can see how you look anyway. Reductions in those sectors and ones that are similarly optional will hurt the economy even more.

This sounds to me like a situation likely to be fully as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s. At that time, the public rallied behind Roosevelt's radical government intervention, and it still wasn't enough. If any such intervention is to happen today, it will first require the entire Republican ideology to be repudiated enough to relegate the party to long-term minority status. (We'll see if Republican words in the past couple days about shelling out large sums for ordinary people actually translate to sustained action). One useful step might be a guaranteed minimum income.

In fairness, it is hard to get an economy going again once it has stalled. Given that we've opted for radical distancing right now, abandoning the policy will likely not lead to a return to what we have come to think of as "normal" soon.

But there are other problems beyond economics. What does it do to children to tell them they can't go to school or play with friends for 18 months or more? The impressions children get of their world will influence them for the rest of their lives. And what does it do to us -- adults as well as children -- to feel that our fellow human beings, including our friends and extended family, are physically dangerous?

I am a member (though not a very active one) of the First Unitarian-Universalist Society in Newton (FUUSN), which took the creative step of holding a virtual service this past Sunday using Zoom. Over 90 households participated. You could see the live feed of families in a grid, a dozen or more per page. I wondered what might be going on beneath the laudable sense of coming together. Considering the real social contact that this service replaced, each family must wonder whether they are dangerous to the others or whether those others are dangerous to them. The epidemiologist's correct explanation would be that the chance of either being a danger to the other is actually very, very small, but the cumulative danger to society from the occasional transmission is high enough that we should avoid such interactions, however small the danger. But that cannot be easily fit into our human psychology -- what the human brain can absorb is that the other people who have been our social world are now dangerous. The longer our isolation goes on, the stronger this sense will become.

There's also the distinct possibility that the sacrifice of those of us who scrupulously follow this path of social distancing will be undercut by the behavior of a minority who go right on partying. The only solution to that might be police state powers that we have been very reluctant to use in this country.

"Exit strategy" is a concept that arose with regard to war planning, but it's a good thing to think about for any endeavor in life. If you start in on a course of action that is costly, how are you going to stop it later? In particular, we should consider it for radical social distancing. Suppose our efforts flatten the curve, and we declare victory in August and say it's time to go back to life as usual. It won't feel like victory. We will be reading about hundreds of deaths every day from the virus, and the idea that it could have been worse will be hypothetical. Your fellow humans are still as dangerous as they were before. Will you want to go out again? Consider the entirely likely possibility of a vaccine not being widely administered for two years. Patterns will become more and more ingrained. And if you consider going out in March of 2022, society will have changed a lot. The places you used to go out to will be out of business.

There are pandemics for which such measures would be justified. Imagine one that has a 25% mortality for the young and healthy. That would justify radical distancing. Perhaps we will learn from this one the skills we would need to deal with that one.

I could be wrong about all this. I welcome feedback. There may be facts I'm not aware of, and new facts may come to light that no one is aware of now. But I think we should consider seriously the dangers we incur by opting for radical social distancing.