#NormalContact science vs. quarantine science?
We aren’t going to dance around, here. We recognize that it’s of the utmost importance to establish the science that makes the #NormalContact movement a safe choice, rather than reckless endangerment of the population. So here you’re going to find a some of the research and evidence that supports the #NormalContact concept. (We do not wish to imply that any of these sources actively advocate for #NormalContact, only that their science supports what #NormalContact advocates.
There are some important caveats here: these are not the only studies, experiments, and articles on these topics, merely some representative ones. The #NormalContact science is extensive and often surprising. You shouldn’t take our word for any of this. Instead, do some research of your own and look up the actual data that we cite. While this page should give you a bunch of data to start with, you should always take responsibility for what you believe is true, rather than expecting the experts to always have your best interest at heart.
There are three questions that need to be answered for #NormalContact science to make sense:
1. Have quarantine and “shelter in place” orders on the general population had a significant impact on the spread of COVID-19 and have they achieved their intended purpose?
2. How dangerous is COVID-19?
3. Is there any reason that quarantine and “shelter-in-place” orders on the general population should be rescinded and broken?
Problem: Quarantine wasn’t intended to prevent everyone from getting COVID-19
The original intent of the quarantine was to “flatten the curve.” The concern was that COVID-19 was so contagious and potentially so virulent that everyone might get sick at once and overwhelm the hospitals.
Lots of “stay homers” like to believe that if we follow the quarantine and “shelter in place” orders that we can prevent folks who are most vulnerable to the disease from catching it. This simply isn’t true and was never the purpose. “Shelter in place” orders aren’t even following proper quarantine protocols to prevent infection: we’re still able to go out, we can all sneeze, cough, and touch each other’s food, goods, vehicles, etc. We aren’t individually disinfecting everything we bring home from the store. Employees at many “essential” businesses aren’t using proper PPE (personal protective equipment) or procedures to prevent from accidentally contaminating shipments that come into “essential businesses,” and customer-facing employees are not preventing cross-contamination of COVID-19 between customers, among other things. Real quarantines take tons and tons of hard work. What we’re doing is merely inconvenient and self-defeating.
If the vulnerable population wants to prevent any exposure they need to follow actual quarantine procedures and genuinely isolate. Too many people think that following the “shelter in place” guidelines will keep them from being exposed to COVID-19, which simply isn’t even their intention. This misinformation alone may cost lives.
It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t an issue of science, but basic logic. Too many folks have forgotten why we upended our lives and tore up our economy; it certainly wasn’t to prevent illness.
Problem: Sweden didn’t lock down and didn’t face an apocalypse.
Sweden is famous for barely locking down for COVID-19. They didn’t close businesses, they left most schools open, all social distancing and masking was a recommendation and not a requirement, and they only put a fairly generous cap on large gatherings. Has Sweden faced deaths? Absolutely. Are they the lowest in deaths per capita? Not at all. In fact, they’re right in the middle. They have lots of countries who locked down tightly both above and below them in the listings.
…which makes them awful for the pro-quarantine position. See, if Sweden was worse off than everyone else then we’d know that the quarantines were critical. …but they aren’t. They’re almost exactly in the middle. That tells us that statistically, there’s no difference between locking down tightly and staying mostly open.
The WHO has even said that if we are going to continue any sort of long-term quarantine that Sweden is the model we should all be looking to follow. (Look for the April 29th press briefing here and skip to the 40:25 mark.)
Problem: Quarantine didn’t work in the US
If quarantines had a significant or worthwhile effect then we’d see more deaths in areas that locked down slower or lighter and fewer deaths in areas that locked down less. Unfortunately, that’s simply not what we see.
California, Michigan, and New York had extremely tight lockdowns. And yet, they had wildly different outcomes. Florida, Georgia, and South Dakota locked down much later (or less severely) and yet, fared better. In fact, Florida locked down so late that they were forecast to practically have an apocalypse. (FL is home to more elderly total and also per capita compared to the rest of the US.)
Even more frustrating, we haven’t seen spikes in COVID-19 cases as states have begun to lift their restrictions. If the restrictions had been genuinely slowing the virus then we would have seen explosions of cases as the lockdowns were lifted, even partially.
Problem: COVID-19 has a mortality rate far, far less than the original models which inspired the lockdowns.
Population studies are finally starting to come in faster and faster. These serological studies look to see how much of the population has had COVID-19. This is important because initial studies were only based on who came to the hospital. The problem is that people only come to the hospital when sick, and we knew very, very early on that 80% of people with COVID-19 show little to no symptoms. Broad population studies were needed to determine how many people had caught (and survived!) COVID-19 so we could more accurately determine mortality rates and the effect of quarantine recommendations. These studies were serological studies that looked at whether someone had antibodies that their body had used to fight COVID-19. If they tested positive for antibodies then they had been infected at some point.
Very quickly we saw results from Stanford, then USC, then Bakersfield, CA (The Bakersfield doctors’ opinions and math were highly controversial, but their actual testing results were considered accurate), and even the State of New York (NY results are discussed more below). There were also unofficial, preliminary reports from Chicago that were also similar. All had one thing in common: far more people had been infected than we believed.
This was fantastic news! To understand why, we need to know how mortality rates are counted. The mortality rate is equal to the total number of cases divided by the number of people that die from the disease or condition. By discovering that far more people had already gone through COVID-19 and survived, the number of cases exploded. This made the mortality rate drop like a stone. Previous estimates had been in the 2-4% rage and were based on hospital studies and hypothetical models; they were little more than educated guesses. Now, we finally knew that the mortality rate even in New York, which was hit harder than anywhere else in the US, was at least as low as 0.5% (in the confirmed testing results), and likely even lower. (Serological testing results were based on testing less than 14% of the population, which predicted roughly 2,509,108 cases total in the state. NY reported 15,983 confirmed and 4,823 suspected deaths through the same date. That calculates to less than a 0.1% mortality rate.)
A statistically “normal” flu season has a 0.1% to 0.2% mortality rate, although the CDC doesn’t know exactly what the average is. This means that out of every thousand people who catch the virus 1-2 of them will die. That’s sad, but unavoidable. People die because they’re old or sick and their bodies just can’t keep fighting, and sometimes merely because bad luck caused the virus to hit their body a little differently than usual and killed them even though they were otherwise healthy.
Let’s be clear: every death is a tragedy. Every death is sad. Yet, death is an inevitable part of life. If no one ever died we would run out of space quickly as babies were born, families grew, and communities prospered. History has taught us that we should expect people to die every year. It’s just how life is; we can’t actually stop death from occurring.
For more than a century we’ve never shut down society for any disease even close to this scale. We have never told people that they shouldn’t have #NormalContact during flu season or any other time. In fact, we didn’t even do that the last two times we had epidemics that killed more people (in terms of a case fatality rate) than COVID-19! In 2002-2004 was the SARS epidemic that had a mortality rate of 9.6% and in 2009 we had the H1N1 (or swine flu) epidemic that had a mortality rate of 0.95%. (It’s also interesting to see how we responded to the 1968-1969 Hong Kong Flu epidemic.) In no case did we lock down society and neither did we ever think we were on the precipice of destruction like with COVID-19. Even looking back, epidemiologists and virologists who study disease don’t caution that we were being reckless. Therefore, succumbing to “pandemic panic” and shutting down society for COVID-19 is an overreaction. The #NormalContact science is actually stronger than the quarantine science!
Problem: Quarantine and “shelter in place” orders are killing people. …LOTS of people.
We’ve never seen COVID-19 before. That means that we don’t know everything that it does. While we don’t know everything yet, we definitely know that it’s not as bad as we initially feared. What we have seen numerous times is unemployment. We know exactly how much a specific rise in unemployment affects depression, suicide, domestic violence (or some COVID-19-related data), child abuse, child neglect, and rape, among others. (Please note that we intentionally chose articles from both the US and Europe to show the universality of these problems, but substantial data is available from any given location if you search.) Unfortunately, we are now crossing the line where we are causing more deaths (note: townhall.com is a somewhat biased site but this particular article is rally well written) by intentionally raising unemployment.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to take offense at the idea that we’re intentionally raising unemployment. And yet, it is inarguably true that the longer we quarantine and have “shelter in place” guidelines the more businesses fail and the more employees are furloughed or terminated. There is no one arguing that extending the quarantines doesn’t cause an increase in economic damage.
So what’s the solution?
That’s the right question! The #NormalContact movement isn’t going to suggest a solution to our problems, however. That gets political. (Opinions here obviously vary wildly from a reopen that’s slower than many states are already doing to reopening everything 100% as of yesterday. It’s irrelevant, as far as the #NormalContact movement is concerned.) Drawing a conclusion to move forward could hypothetically be based on the #NormalContact science, but is beyond the range of our philosophy to keep things super-focused. All we suggest is that it’s absolutely the time to treat each other respectfully and friendly like we used to, and not like we need to keep everyone six feet, or two cart lengths, or any other unusual distance apart. It’s time for #NormalContact.
What can I do next?
- Wear a red and blue ribbon!
- Read more on the philosophy of #NormalContact
- See our FAQ
- Return home