1/ Last night my wife and I made the decision to cancel my 7-year-old daughter's gymnastics birthday party this weekend due to #COVID19. Why? How did she react?
A thread from an ER doc/scientist who doesn’t freak out about most things:
A thread from an ER doc/scientist who doesn’t freak out about most things:
2/ With less than 2,000 cases of #COVID19 in the US many people think we are already over-reacting. Wrong. We are under-reacting. The truth is there have been countless patients US ER docs have wanted to test, but haven’t been able to: inquirer.com/health/coronav…
3/ With thousands of undiagnosed people in the US actively spreading #COVID19 unknowingly, there will be an inevitable tidal wave similar to what has happened in Italy and Europe. And since we can’t test and isolate, we need to “#FlattenTheCurve”
4/ What does it mean, to #FlattenTheCurve”? It’s limiting social contact and taking aggressive protective measures today so we don’t overwhelm and literally break the health care system in April. Read more here:
vox.com/2020/3/10/2117…
vox.com/2020/3/10/2117…
5/ Docs in Europe getting crushed by the #CoronaVirusPandemic say what the US is currently doing is “like watching a familiar horror movie, where the protagonists, yet again, split into pairs or decided to take a tour of a dark basement...”
newsweek.com/young-unafraid…
newsweek.com/young-unafraid…
6/ Ok, I get it I need to limit social contact to #FlattenTheCurve, but I don’t want to - I’ve been planning this great event. I get it. There are two big psychological forces that make it difficult to #CancelEverythingNow: “present bias” and “loss aversion”
#BehavioralScience
#BehavioralScience
7/ "Present bias” made it difficult to cancel her birthday party. We imagined her immediate disappointment/tears upon hearing the news. But once you consider the event could lead to spread of undiagnosed #COVID19 and someone getting seriously ill in a few weeks, the balance tips
8/ “Loss aversion,” the tendency to feel the pain of losses much more than equivalent gains, made it painful to think about losing the deposit to reserve the gymnastics center. Luckily, the place was great, and said they would refund our deposit if we rescheduled within a year
9/ What happened when we told our daughter we were going to cancel her birthday party due to #COVID19: she shed a tear but said "I understand" and that it would all be ok as long she could still have cake. We hugged, that was it. The party will be rescheduled when things settle
10/ Finally, if you’re still not motivated to limit social contact to #FlattenTheCurve, just know that there are thousands of EMS personnel, ER docs, nurses, techs, respiratory therapists, and housekeepers fighting #COVID19 and some of them will lose their lives doing their job
