3/30/20 AM Update: Answering “Why can’t we just go back to work?”

If I can slide in some science and math for a second because I know sometimes this stuff is tough to wrap one’s head around. So please bare with me while I be the annoying nerdy friend…

I had a friend from college post a link to a column titled, “South Korea proves we don’t need to shut down the economy to curb Coronavirus transmission”

I’ve seen this link from others, too. So, I was intrigued. Any time someone “proves” something, though, as a rule of thumb, I get skeptical. Because proving something in science is a very tough thing to do. But I was intrigued since it was making the rounds so quickly.

A quick summation of the article: The United States asking people to stay home is a waste of time because people continue to go out anyway and social distancing isn’t an attainable goal. To solve the economic issues, the United States needs to test more people – like South Korea – and send the healthy people back to work. Because the only reason the social distancing orders are being given is to make lawmakers feel powerful.

Politics aside (you guys know that isn’t what I care about), that’s just a summation. While I’ve turned into the de facto fact-checker lately, I want to pause for a moment to highlight a trend I’ve – anecdotally – noticed: A lot of the buzz about things that the United States could try tends to be coming from these smaller websites. And that’s good! New ideas are great. I’m all about exchanging ideas – even ones that may not carry a lot of weight.

However, we also need to look at these ideas with a skeptical eye. Things are never as easy as they seem. Math can help us realize this.

The problem is asymptomatic infections

The ‘ask’ by state leaders for people to stay home was, as the author points out, to decrease the risk of spreading the virus.

Sadly, that is the only real answer. Whether people listen or not is, sadly, irrelevant.

What the author does not take the time to discuss is the research from the Cruise Ships that shows for every 20 people tested who are infected, with symptoms, there were 17 more tested, and infected without symptoms yet. Of those 37 total people infected, seven stayed asymptomatic even though they were infected. Meaning they were infected with the virus and, without the test, would’ve never known they have it.

And it is those seven hypothetical people that are the important ones. Those are the people that, without being tested, are likely causing the most damage. Because those are the ones most likely to ignore state directives since they “feel fine.”

Where mass-testing falls short

So, the author suggests, let’s just test a bunch of people! The author suggests a similar approach to the testing in South Korea. But, even if the United States tests twice as many people as tested in South Korea, that is only testing 1 out of every 71 people. That means about 4.6 million people would get tested. Not bad, I suppose.

But that is out of the 325 million people in the country.

That leaves a lot of people untested. And we spend a ton of time, energy, and money testing people.

And it doesn’t solve the biggest problem. The biggest problem, is the people who have it, but don’t know it, that are walking around and acting like normal. And those people are infecting others.

Putting it all together

Getting back to the hypothetical seven people who are infected but asymptomatic: Since COVID-19 has an ~R2.5 transmission rate, it only takes 10 steps (where people are infecting people, who then infect other people, and so on) for those seven people to infect an additional 67,000 people.

That is a lot.

And even if the mortality rate is half what research has suggested, and it is only 0.6%, that is still 400 dead people. Not low enough? How about a 0.3% mortality rate. That is about 200 people dead. From seven original asymptomatic people.

I think everyone can agree, that is awful.

And that number of “seven people” was an estimate for every 20 people who test positive. and we have had 140,000 positive test results in this country.

Extrapolate that out and you have the potential for 49,000 asymptomatic people walking around, right now, potentially infecting others. And that is only an estimate. Could it be much lower? Absolutely. Could it be much higher? Totally. The medical community just doesn’t know.

There isn’t a quick fix or an easy answer to all of this. The math would suggest that there are too many cases and too many people in this country to use mass-testing to attempt to solve the problem. That is why social distancing is the only real option being suggested by the medical field and lawmakers. And why it is so very important.

I know that is it probably annoying to some people. Frustrating to others. And, given the impact to the economy, pretty horrible for a lot of people. I get it. I do. We are all in this together.

But saying that, we have to remember what “in it together” means. Because for everyone one person, that same ten-step infection process (where one person infects 2.5 people, and they infect 2.5 people, and so on) infects about 9,536 people.

I don’t want to be responsible for that. Nor the potential 28 deaths (assuming a mortality rate of 0.3%).

So we all have to do what we can to protect ourselves and others.