You know it's possible that because you had read all about pandemics and how bad things can become and all the worst case scenarios, you then (subconsciously or not) consider yourself better informed than most and you then start having unnecessary and irrational thoughts and actions.

Just a thought!

Aside from point scoring exactly what is the point here?

Can we move on? If you want to try to score points about Brexit there's a perfectly good thread available for that purpose.

I don't know about your lifestyle, but if most people had done this then there would be a big impact on many sectors (hospitality, entertainment, travel etc.) as demand could collapse.

If COVID-19 becomes ubiqutous then eventually it will most likely mutate into something much more similar to the common cold or seasonal flu. However, prior to that, there may well be multiple waves of the disease which will have a much higher mortality rate over the first year or two. The economic and human cost of this could be disastorous. If it becomes a pandemic, or indeed probably when it does, reducing individual transmissitivity will be key in slowing the spread until a vacinne is developed.

Are you still computing this? Have you thought about it? If you were in Italy right now, the chance that you'd be infected is tiny! Taking preemptive action now would be justified though, but not a month ago!

Many people have already done this, demand is falling in those sectors. And we know relatively modest changes in R0 can have a large impact on the growth of the virus. This is all part of the cost/benefit analysis.

Put it this way, if this really takes off in the way some experts are saying it could (global pandemic, millions of people infected e.c.t.) then the economic consequences are going to be huge. But delaying a pandemic and limiting the spread will help mitigate the economic effects as well as the human ones.

China really stamped down hard on the virus after the first month, and as a result economic activity is starting to resume slowly (at least outside of Hubei).

Yes exactly, imagine if most people had followed your example a month ago, demand would crash and people would have lost their jobs even though there was no epidemic in the UK!

You are just not thinking rationally the cost/benefit analysis.

You are asking the wrong questions. The thing that makes these events scary is the exponential phase of growth that happens. If a viral outbreak is allowed to grow unabated you can go from nothing to a sizeable minority of the population infected in a few months. However if you always wait until a sizeable minority of the population is infected by then it's far too late.

So you agree I wasn't being so simplistic as "Saint has admited he wanted brexit to go badly wrong so that he can enjoy watching people be ironically punished."

Wanting to see the people responsible for my quality of life worsening is surely fine. What I don't want is the impacts of Brexit to cause such a disaster that the lives of me and my family are substantially damaged.

It's not the wrong question at all, it's absolutely the right question. Again you are not thinking this clearly.

Because the cost benefit analysis does not give me the benefit of hindsight.

You didn't bother to consider the counterfactual. Which is, assume it took off in the UK last month and we are now in a situation similar to Hubei. Something that might have been delayed, had most people taken steps to limit their own transmissibility.

OK analogy for exponential behaviour.

Radioactive isotope with a half life of about 1 hour. You eat a gram after a week and thereby claim it's safe to eat the same isotope after 30 minutes.

Indeed, I'm waiting before I dip my toe in again!

Your counterfactual isn't really possible. As you know, China was very slow to react for several weeks, while the UK reacted quickly when we had the first few cases.

Iran is a big problem with regards to the containment of COVID-19. Qom is a theological seat of learning for Shia Islam and therefore a place of pilgrimage. The authorities in Iran have been censoring news about the situation in Iran, but Shia scholars are coming and going and therefore exponential spread of the virus both within Iran and in neighbouring states with large Shia communities is inevitable:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-iran-accused-of-covering-up-50-deaths-in-qom-kq57fsg63

"...

Qom is Iran’s premier centre of theological learning, visited regularly by Shia clerics from around the Muslim world. The authorities believe the virus arrived in the city either from a businessman who had visited China or from Chinese workers building a solar electricity plant near by.

From Qom, it has spread to four other cities, including Tehran, where a senior district official is among those infected.

...

Iran has become a new centre for the spread of the disease, just as cases in China, where the virus first took hold, start to tail off.

By this morning, cases had been confirmed in travellers from Iran to Lebanon, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Canada. This afternoon, Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border Iran, were added to the list.

In the former case an Afghan citizen who had recently returned from Qom was diagnosed, in the latter the patient is an Iranian theological student visiting the holy Iraqi city of Najaf.

Other neighbours, including Turkey, have now closed their Iranian borders.

The cases in Kuwait also show some anomalies: the three patients being treated there had not been to Qom, but had flown from the northern Iranian city of Mashhad, where no cases have been reported."

I've seen you admit that you want brexit to go badly so people can be punished for their desicsion. To actually want something to go wrong just because you disagree with it, is a terrible attitude to have.

It's not the disease that's the problem.  It's the way people respond to the perceived threat.

I am guessing by next winter there'll be a vaccine for the elderly and others vulnerable to it, and the rest of us will just treat it as an occupational hazard of life.  Like the common cold.

Pretty poor analogy. You'd be justified in taking action in Italy this weekend (even though the chance of being infected is still tiny) exactly because you may be at the first part of the exponential curve.

I guess you thought we were at the point here in the UK in late January even though after a week or so following the 9 cases, it was clear that this was not the case.

Some experts estimate outside china more than 1/3 of cases may have gone undetected. I've even seen figures as high as 50% quoted. In order to stop a global pandemic there is zero margin for error. This is why it is now considered to be unlikely that a pandemic can be stopped.

History tells us it's those buying. Averaged over decades, the stock market has beaten inflation for the past 100 years.

The real issue is not the headline death rate (apart from for those who do die and their relatives), the problem is the number of infected people who need hospital treatment, even though most subsequently recover. Health systems in most countries find it hard to cope, all non-urgent health treatments end up being suspended and hospitals themselves become epicentres of infection.

Well, you also thought the mortality rate is at least 10% and could up as much as 50% (I can't remember the exact range you had suggested).

Er no, its actually a really good analogy because you are comparing two things that have very similar mathematical properties.

And the problem is calculating some time independent risk ratio when the behaviour could not be more time dependent.

Which brings me back to my argument: a month ago you got the beginning of the (possible) exponential curve completely wrong here in the UK and if most people or the authorities had done this, then there would be much more harm from these actions.

You may call this hindsight, most people would call it better judgement.

Yes I agree, I did. But that's because it's almost impossible to predict it because of that 1-2 week lag. No one saw the explosion that happened in South Korea either.