Q: One thing I have been saying, and maybe this is wrong, since I am not a doctor, is that this is not binary. It isn’t that you have been exposed to the virus or not, and if not, who cares. There is about risk mitigation, and, if you do ninety-eight per cent of the smart things, that is better than two per cent. Not everyone will be at a hundred per cent. We are human. But we have to get as close as we can.
A: All of the infectious-disease modelling would suggest that something is better than nothing, and a lot of somethings are better than fewer nothings. In some ways, this is akin to voting. In a lot of states and cities, especially ones with predominant parties, people say, “Well, what does my vote count?” If everyone thought that way, we would have a more dysfunctional democracy. Your vote does count. A couple of years ago, we had a local town election here where I live decided by one vote. The way I look at it for social distancing is that you never know what your individual action, especially a preventive action, can and will do. It is very hard to quantify a negative of something bad not happening.
But we do have good evidence of what doing nothing will cause to occur. That has become really stark.
From an interview with the author of the previously posted This is Not A Snow Day: