So I've been thinking.
It's pretty much agreed upon that any data is 2-3 weeks behind simply because of natural viral behavior.
With that in mind, I'm gonna hit you with some anecdotal evidence. I'm more of a data guy and I'm open to being wrong, but here goes.
We saw the blazing inferno of out of control outbreak in late March going into early April, The evidence tells us those contractions were happening in late February and early March.
Late February and early March, I was riding the subway almost every day, right up through March 9th which was my last day at work. That day, March 9th, I was out from 10-8 and rode the subway three different times. Liverpool had a match March 5th. I stood shoulder to shoulder in a pub watching that match and took the 7 train though Flushing, Corona, and Elmhurst there and back. During that train ride, I shook hands with a homeless person. The details of that story, I will leave alone so I don't detail myself, but I'm serious. It's amazing what we did when things were normal. I know for a fact that now several of my students have had it and been symptomatic.
I was exposed to this. There's no other possibility in my mind. Which leaves three outcomes:
1) I'm Superman. I get exposed to illnesses and don't contract them.
2) I was completely asymptomatic.
3) I never contracted it.
I don't think I'm Superman, so let's consider these last two. If I was asymptomatic, then so was everyone in my house. If I got it, they got it. We're in constant close contact and the time I would have had it and would have been spreading it was before we were paying particular attention to it, which I think is the case for most. Possible? Yes. This would lead me to believe that an asymptomatic state is even more common than we think, in which case, we need a ballpark number and we need to figure out what the immunity implications are.
As far as not contracting it, that's also possible. This is the way I'm leaning, because I know my body, but again, anecdotal evidence. Take it with a grain of salt. The only thing I do particularly special is I wash my hands until they break out, I don't leave the house without two bottles of hand sanitizer (which I deployed immediately after meeting my friend on the train), and I haven't touched a doorknob since about 2003. This would tell me, and I think this is true, that there are ways to live your life safely and not get it. I'm not downplaying the threat, but this isn't jumping off the walls. It isn't flying through the air defying gravity, and it isn't growing legs and chasing you.
My point with all this is that I'm convinced there's a way forward in terms of managing this that isn't quarantine. We gotta put our heads together, listen to the experts, and figure out what's relatively safe.
Then we can respond to that economically. If my third outcome is true, we should be making sanitizer and disinfectant until we have enough to fill MSG and then we make more. That's production. Those are new jobs.
