# Will people end up rebelling against the quarantine if it goes too long? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [April 8, 2020, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339 "2020-04-08T12:23:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/121 "2020-04-13T18:41:28Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > If governments lifted restrictions on bars and restaurants and movie theaters tomorrow, those businesses would mostly get just a trickle of customers. Isnt a trickle better than none? Maybe just be reservations only? ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/122 "2020-04-13T18:48:55Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > A lot of people are talking about a plan to reopen the economy as though the issue was that governments have shut things down, and if they’d just be less draconian, more businesses could open up again. > > But that’s largely not the case. Fear of infection shut things down, and governments helped provide some structure over exactly how that shutdown would work. > > If you look at, for example, restaurant reservations, they dropped from normal levels in late Feb to basically 0 in mid-march, and that’s independent of when various local governments instituted shutdowns. > > If governments lifted restrictions on bars and restaurants and movie theaters tomorrow, those businesses would mostly get just a trickle of customers. Spot on. Too many people react to the shutdown like teen-agers getting grounded by their mean, inconsistent ol’ parents. I suspect very few of these people have had a friend or relative seriously ill with the disease. Idiots will be idiots, and if they were only endangering themselves, I’d say to heck with it, let 'em go. The problem is, of course, that they’re endangering others as well. How blithely they toss around the supposedly small percentage of people who would die! How foolishly they assume the economy would be fine, just fine, if the government would just rescind the stay-home orders! **iamthewalrus** is correct. We know this from [a study](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/02/coronavirus-economy-reopen-deaths-balance-analysis-159248#3) done by experts of the closest thing we’ve had to the COVID-19 pandemic: the 1918 influenza pandemic. [Bolding mine.] > [@](#): > > Second, we found that cities that implemented early and extensive public-health measures suffered no adverse economic effects from these interventions by 1919; in other words, the interventions did not make the economic impact of the flu worse. **On the contrary, cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively experienced a relative increase in real economic activity after the pandemic subsided, compared with cities that intervened less aggressively.** > … > This result might be hard to grasp at a time when millions of Americans are currently filing for unemployment amid the coronavirus pandemic. **How can it be that shutdown tactics like school closures and restrictions on business hours could actually benefit the economy?** > > The reason is that pandemic economics are different from ordinary economics. In ordinary times, business shutdowns and other restrictions are bad for the economy, as they limit economic activity. **But it’s important to remember that in a pandemic, the disease itself is extremely disruptive to the economy.** Households do not want to spend money or go to work if it involves a major health risk, and businesses do not want to invest because economic conditions are so uncertain. The alternative to these public-health restrictions is not a normal functioning economy, but rather a widespread, debilitating outbreak of disease that causes major economic disruption in the short and medium term. TL;DR: You want the economy to go back to normal faster? Quit griping and keep isolating. Yes, the economy is and will be seriously damaged, but it’s not from the restrictions; it’s from COVID-19. This virus had “economic disaster” written all over it from the very beginning. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/123 "2020-04-13T19:02:46Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Isnt a trickle better than none? Maybe just be reservations only? Maybe. It’s a complicated issue. Depends on how many people are likely to get sick as a result. My guess would be no, because of the non-linearity of the spread of disease. A restaurant with, say, 20% of their former customer base is still going to go out of business pretty quickly without government support. A disease with a 5% higher R0 due to more people going out to eat is potentially going to be disastrous. I don’t know what those percentages would actually be, but any linear increase in economic activity is rapidly going to be dwarfed by a geometric increase in transmission rates. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/124 "2020-04-13T21:32:33Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > TL;DR: You want the economy to go back to normal faster? Quit griping and keep isolating. > > Yes, the economy is and will be seriously damaged, but it’s not from the restrictions; it’s from COVID-19. This virus had “economic disaster” written all over it from the very beginning. Frankly, I wouldnt base 21rst century economic policy off of something that happened 100 years ago. Also I’m guessing your not out of a job or seeing your business go under. The numbers are not going to be at zero for a long time to matter the quarantine and self isolating. We need to get the economy moving again, although carefully. I didnt say open everything back wide open tomorrow but I am saying lets start taking more steps. People are taking precautions and will continue to do so. We need to identify where the outbreaks are and stop them. Keeping the rest of us isolated is an example of the cure being worse than the disease. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/125 "2020-04-13T21:38:29Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > {…} We need to identify where the outbreaks are and stop them. {…} “And stop them” . . . how exactly? Enthrall us with your acumen. CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/126 "2020-04-13T22:04:57Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > We need to identify where the outbreaks are and stop them. > [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > “And stop them” . . . how exactly? Enthrall us with your acumen. > > CMC fnord! And “identify where the outbreaks are” how? With the tests that we still don’t have anywhere near enough of to even test everyone who’s sick? ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/127 "2020-04-13T22:05:48Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > We need to identify where the outbreaks are and stop them. Keeping the rest of us isolated is an example of the cure being worse than the disease. Given the long incubation periods, the high potential for asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic transmission, and the lack of adequate testing, we still have the problem that by the time you can identify an outbreak, it’s already too late to stop it. At that point, you are identifying people who were infected a week to ten days ago, maybe longer. Even if you could instantly stop everybody in place and isolate everyone individually (which of course you can’t), you are still going to have new cases emerging for probably two weeks, and deaths mounting for several weeks beyond that. Given the impracticality (impossibility) of instantly stopping everybody in place when you do identify the outbreak, realistically stopping an outbreak means locking down the area for two months, give or take. How large an area gets locked down depends on how crowded it is and how much community interaction (transmission) may have taken place; if some of your infected people were out and about in crowds during their contagious period, that might mean locking down most of a metro area. So, for example, you identify a cluster of cases centered around community events in Olathe, Kansas. That might mean shutting down all of Johnson County for two months while you wait for the virus to stop itself or burn itself out. Then you reopen Johnson County, and next weekend a pre-symptomatic guy comes up from Wichita to an event at the Overland Park Convention Center, and three or four weeks after that you’ve got another outbreak spread out across your county, shutting down the county for another two months while that outbreak burns itself out. What is the economy of your county like after that second shutdown, and are you willing to host visitors down from Omaha or St. Louis (which have been operating on chronologically-separate rhythms of outbreak and shutdown)? ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/128 "2020-04-14T03:17:12Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Frankly, I wouldnt base 21rst century economic policy off of something that happened 100 years ago. Also I’m guessing your not out of a job or seeing your business go under. > > The numbers are not going to be at zero for a long time to matter the quarantine and self isolating. > > We need to get the economy moving again, although carefully. I didnt say open everything back wide open tomorrow but I am saying lets start taking more steps. People are taking precautions and will continue to do so. We need to identify where the outbreaks are and stop them. Keeping the rest of us isolated is an example of the cure being worse than the disease. I’m smart enough that even with my worries about what this means for my personal finances, I can opt for the choice that’s going to mean SHORTER economic hardship for me and everyone else. Look, you don’t want to look at anything, including past experience, that contradicts what you want so badly to be true. Fine. Let me put this in simple terms for you: **lifting restrictions will slow economic recovery, not speed it up** because a pandemic economy isn’t like the economy without a pandemic. People do not–repeat– **do not** go forth and buy like they did pre-pandemic. There will still be too many cases and too much uncertainty about the economic future for people to want to buy or invest or spend. See how that works? Now, did I pull that out of thin air? NO. I want to get things back to normal, and yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough. But using past experience, we know that’s not how this works. You can refuse to learn anything and just go on pushing for what’s going to keep us in this economic disaster longer, and if you succeed, you’ll be griping and confused about the sluggish economy far longer than you’d otherwise need to be. That’s what you want? Go for it. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/129 "2020-04-14T11:26:21Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Given the long incubation periods, the high potential for asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic transmission, and the lack of adequate testing, we still have the problem that by the time you can identify an outbreak, it’s already too late to stop it. At that point, you are identifying people who were infected a week to ten days ago, maybe longer. Even if you could instantly stop everybody in place and isolate everyone individually (which of course you can’t), you are still going to have new cases emerging for probably two weeks, and deaths mounting for several weeks beyond that. > > Given the impracticality (impossibility) of instantly stopping everybody in place when you do identify the outbreak, realistically stopping an outbreak means locking down the area for two months, give or take. How large an area gets locked down depends on how crowded it is and how much community interaction (transmission) may have taken place; if some of your infected people were out and about in crowds during their contagious period, that might mean locking down most of a metro area. > > So, for example, you identify a cluster of cases centered around community events in Olathe, Kansas. That might mean shutting down all of Johnson County for two months while you wait for the virus to stop itself or burn itself out. Then you reopen Johnson County, and next weekend a pre-symptomatic guy comes up from Wichita to an event at the Overland Park Convention Center, and three or four weeks after that you’ve got another outbreak spread out across your county, shutting down the county for another two months while that outbreak burns itself out. What is the economy of your county like after that second shutdown, and are you willing to host visitors down from Omaha or St. Louis (which have been operating on chronologically-separate rhythms of outbreak and shutdown)? Well thats a good point but there really are places where their are outbreaks which can be controlled. Consider Wyandotte County. They have had about 383 cases of people getting it. Now 110 of those were from just ONE facility (90 patients and 20 staff) called [Riverbend Rehab.](https://fox4kc.com/news/kck-rehab-facility-reports-more-covid-19-deaths-and-positive-cases-as-kansas-reaches-over-1330-cases/) Elsewhere it seems most of the cases are at nursing homes and assisted living places. So it doesnt seem that its being spread by going to the grocery store where one uses social distance and hand sanitizer. Its people living and working close together. I think playgrounds, parks, and many businesses could reopen as long as they are careful. Our postal facility has around 200 people and zero cases. But then we are using gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer like crazy. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/130 "2020-04-14T15:01:02Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Elsewhere it seems most of the cases are at nursing homes and assisted living places. > > So it doesnt seem that its being spread by going to the grocery store where one uses social distance and hand sanitizer. Its people living and working close together. > > I think playgrounds, parks, and many businesses could reopen as long as they are careful. Our postal facility has around 200 people and zero cases. But then we are using gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer like crazy. However, it is not arising spontaneously in these nursing homes and assisted living places; somebody who has the infection and doesn’t know it is carrying it there. Now, where did THAT person contract it? I haven’t seen anything about Patient Zero at Riverbend, but what are the chances that somebody picked up the virus at the grocery store or church or somewhere else in the community and then went to work or visit at the nursing home, where it then starts spreading like wildfire in a closely-confined and vulnerable population? ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/131 "2020-04-14T15:27:38Z")
A site called dailywire says protests are being organized in some states. Not sure it’s related but it says elsewhere there’s a petition of 200,000 to recall a governor Whiter because of unusual restrictions. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/132 "2020-04-14T16:40:05Z")
> [@SuntanLotion](#): > > A site called dailywire says protests are being organized in some states. Not sure it’s related but it says elsewhere there’s a petition of 200,000 to recall a governor Whiter because of unusual restrictions. 200,000 Michiganders who are actually subject to Governor Whitmer’s order, or 200,000 random people who saw something about her on TV or Facebook? (Since Meg Whitmer was first mentioned as a potential running mate for Biden, she has attracted a lot more attention on the national stage.) ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/133 "2020-04-14T17:04:16Z")
I don’t know. Facebook seems to have a lot of people who are seriously against the knockdown. Admittedly someone who wanted to be world dictator could use this as a chance to take over and that Does scare me. But I am starting to realize it is pretty much to keep people from dying. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/134 "2020-04-14T17:06:11Z")
Sorry, autocorrect strikes again. Lockdown ---
**Author:** ![Tatterdemalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tatterdemalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tatterdemalion)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/135 "2020-04-14T17:30:09Z")
Knockdown works. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/136 "2020-04-14T21:20:11Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > We need to get the economy moving again, although carefully. I didnt say open everything back wide open tomorrow but I am saying lets start taking more steps. I think the problem is that we’re already trying to take the necessary steps to reopen things, but we’re not there yet. Because what we need to be able to reopen is things like: 1. Sufficient production of hand sanitizer and cleaning products that you can just buy them. Currently, those shelves are empty. 2. Enough tests that we can at least test everyone with cold symptoms, and everyone who anyone who tests positive was around in the last two weeks. 3. Everyone to wear masks outside the home. It’s not clear to me that we need _a plan_ to reopen the economy. The plan is obvious. Test. Clean. Selective isolation. But we can’t do it yet. We need actual production of goods and services that are lacking, and a change in cultural norms. Those are hard problems to solve. Right now you can’t get a test unless you’re very sick. You can’t possibly contain this if we can’t test people who were exposed but asymptomatic. We were stymied by a month of bad guidance on masks, but if you walk around _New York City_ right now, not everyone’s wearing a mask! Practically the entire country of Japan started wearing masks overnight, but we maybe never get there. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339/137 "2020-04-14T21:28:16Z")
> [@SuntanLotion](#): > > Facebook seems to have a lot of people who are seriously against the knockdown. Lots of pre-schoolers are also seriously against eating vegetables with dinner. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-end-up-rebelling-against-the-quarantine-if-it-goes-too-long/851339.md?page=6)