Social distancing

It isn't working. We have ordered every bar and business to be closed with the intention that we stop the human interaction that makes transmission of the Wuhan virus possible. People are interacting anyway.  Anecdotal example:

My in-laws are members of a drinking club. You know the ones- clubs like the Moose Lodge, VFW, American Legion, etc. that are all established to allow people to congregate and imbibe in inexpensive booze. Now this particular club has a liquor license and has been shut down by order of the governor, so they followed the order and stopped selling booze. So far, so good, right?

Not so fast. There is a core of members who are still going every day to do "maintenance" on the building, which is allowed under the order. While they are working, they are helping themselves to the booze from the bar, and spending all day there, drinking and "working" on the building. They have been doing so for the past two weeks. When my wife told them that they should stay home, their reply was "No one here is sick. We are all fine, so I don't think it's a problem. We've been doing this for two weeks, and no one has gotten sick yet."

More than anything, this is why I don't think that shutting down all of the businesses can work. I have said all along that this is not going to work- because the only answer is to stop all interaction between the infected and the uninfected. Since there is no way to know which is which until it is too late, because once you are showing symptoms, you have been contagious for days.

The proposed answers to the shutdown are to throw money at it. Why not just declare this war lost, and let the disease run its course? If we do not, we still lose the war against the virus, and then we destroy our economy as well.