Why COVID-19 prevention at the margin might be bad for most LWers
I'm surprised and confused that no one else seems to be saying this, but I think the most extreme measures LWers have been talking about are much more likely to harm than help the world, and probably those LWers themselves. These are things like using copper tape on frequently touched surfaces or leaving packages outdoors for 2 days. Note that I'm not just saying these aren't worth it on net; I think doing them is actively harmful and you should stop. EDITED: A number of people have pointed out concerns that even in those whose acute illness is not severe, there may be significant long-term negative health effects. I definitely wasn't adequately accounting for that. I'm not thrilled about the quality of evidence for this one way or the other, but that's perhaps to be expected for such a new disease. (There's no real way to know how COVID-19 survivors will be doing a year later, yet.) If these effects are much more common than death in the young and healthy, that would be a strong argument against my first point below, and against the overall conclusion of infection being beneficial. I've edited the title slightly to account for these. I still think the rest of these points would point towards infection being less bad than otherwise, and that I've seen a striking lack of people commenting on the fact that some factors point in that direction. From this point on I've left the post as is. Here are my assumptions (I think these are pretty consensus, not extreme weird views): * COVID-19 isn't that bad for the vast majority of young and otherwise healthy people (no worse than a bad flu). * COVID-19 is pretty bad for the elderly and people with other serious chronic conditions, especially very elderly people and elderly people with other conditions (double digit mortality rate). * Severe cases are not only less likely in the young and otherwise healthy, they have a much better prognosis when they do occur. * Most LWers are young, otherwise healthy, and not living w
Thank you. I see where you're coming from, now, and I'll think about it.
One thought is that, in addition to whatever point(s) of departure is/are selected for a piece of fiction, or a video game, such works basically always have some degree of "plot logic" / "game logic", which are common elements that are "unrealistic" (i.e. unlikely in a world that runs on physics), but are convergently helpful for making an entertaining or aesthetically valuable story or game. I don't know what "simulation logic" would be. We can't look at the existing simulations, unless we want to call fiction and games low-fidelity simulations.
I also never feel that great about generalizing from imaginary... (read more)