Top-down vs bottom-up social distancing

[jon-nyc]

Interesting graph shows how quickly people were abandoning restaurants before being ordered to do so.

Some implications here, some are points I’ve made before...

1). All those attempts to quantify economic damage of our policies assume that without the policies we’d have status-quo ante. Clearly that’s not true.

2). We can open up the economy, but that doesn’t mean they’ll come.

3). How much of an experiment is Sweden really? Movie theatres are open, for example, but revenues are down 90%.

[Jolly]

I think some things are changed forever, unless we have an effective vaccine.

[mark]

We are saving a lot of money not eating out at restaurants. I like it. Not really sure how much we will go out after this.

No way will it be as much as we did previously.

[brenda]

All true, Jon. Social distancing will still be preferred by many people for a long time yet, perhaps for several months to a year, maybe more.

I've been thinking about this for my work and family life. Both will be affected for a long time yet. Both work and family activities are going to be a challenge to navigate.

[Mik]

It will be a tough couple years. Certainly not what I expected retirement to be! But folks are not going to go out until they feel safe, and each new outbreak will solidify that.

[jon-nyc]

We didn't eat out all that much.

But we went on a lot of vacations, as you know. The day I'm vaccinated we'll pick that right back up.

[LuFins Dad]

This goes to the heart of my argument that the models were weighting government restrictions and mandates too highly in their projections and didn’t give enough weight to personal decisions and responsibilities accepted by individuals and private businesses.

[jon-nyc]

Yep.

[89th]

Really cool chart, btw.

[taiwan_girl]

@jon-nyc

Agree. But my concern is the next virus when it comes. However, i think we will learn so much from this one that for future ones, we will be better prepared to react (at least I hope so).

I know that human memory is pretty short, so things, strategies, etc can be forgotten quite quickly,

[Aqua Letifer]

@mark said in Top-down vs bottom-up social distancing:

We are saving a lot of money not eating out at restaurants. I like it. Not really sure how much we will go out after this.

No way will it be as much as we did previously.

We're getting delivery a couple of times a week still. Mostly to help out the folks who are open. I hope it does help, anyway.

[Mik]

It's true, though. We isolated several days before the state even talked about it. Seemed like common sense defense. Since we are retired, the opening up won't affect us much if at all. I still cannot catch this.