Yesterday, the president argued that COVID-19 is like car accidents, so we should accept it as a fact of doing business and get on with things. He’s wrong in several ways. Let me explain. #COVID2019 #COVID19 #caraccidents 1/x
COVID-19 is not like car accidents because we have no prior experience with this virus. It’s new to humans. We don’t have drivers ed for COVID-19. And it’s contagious (more contagious than the flu). Car accidents are contagious only in freak pileups, but COVID-19 always is. 2/x
We don’t have vaccine or safe, effective treatment to mitigate COVID-19. (In fact, some people in that tiny study of hydroxychloroquine couldn’t finish the study because they moved to ICU or died. They weren’t counted.) We’re in a COVID-19 blizzard with whiteout conditions. 3-/x
When there’s a blizzard, driving conditions are so bad that everyone who can stay home should stay home. That’s where we are now with COVID-19. Stay home so that you don’t slide off the road and freeze. Stay home so you don’t spin into an oncoming family. But there’s more. 4/x
The president spoke as if we do nothing to prevent car accidents. He’s wrong. We have a system set up to reduce the number of accidents & also the number of fatalities. We don’t have that for COVID-19. We have a speed limit that reduces car accidents. See where I’m going? 5/x
Social distancing is the speed limit we need to impose to reduce COVID-19 fatalities. We have a speed limit for driving & we need a low speed limit for COVID-19 until we can put other safety measures in place. When the US first started driving, we didn’t have licenses... 6/x
...and we didn’t even have lines in the middle of roads. As more people drove, we needed more safety measures like stop lights & merge lanes. For COVID-19, we don’t have these & risk traffic-jam pileups at hospitals. The car culture grew slowly, but COVID-19 spreads fast. 7/x
So the president misunderstood his analogy. Instead, think of social distancing as a required speed limit. It’s not going to prevent the spread entirely, but it’s going to reduce the number of serious cases all at once. Think of the difference... 8/x
...between taking a sharp turn at 35 mph and taking it at 80 mph. Now think about it with traffic. We need a COVID-19 speed limit, and that’s social distancing. When I was a kid, Chicago redid a section of street that crossed the river. It was a busy section, and... 9/x
...commuters were inconvenienced for months. To reduce drivers’ risk, the city changed two very sharp turns into a smooth S-curve. That’s what we need with COVID-19. We must use social distancing temporarily to flatten spikes into a curve so that we can live more safely. 10/x
And of course, we also have car safety regulations, which have changed over time as we learned more and had more capability. What social distancing achieves is time to put safety measures, like vaccines and proven treatments, in place. If we can do all this stuff... 11/x
...to reduce car accidents and fatalities, we can do social distancing for the same reasons for COVID-19. The president is wrong that we just accept car accidents. There’s a hundred-year history of reducing risk. We need social distancing for the same reasons now. 12/x
When the president says we accept car accidents, respond: No, we don’t. Social distancing is the speed limit for COVID-19. Flattening the curve prevents traffic-jam pileups & flying off the road. We need social distancing like we need stop signs. 13/x #SocialDistancing #COVID19
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