Edit: It turns out that economists have investigated the corresponding mortality costs from a recession– and they’re negative! Mortality rates go down in recessions. Add that to the environmental benefits of slowing down the global economy, and lock-downs look a lot like a clear boon for society.

We are observing a fascinating social phenomenon. Far from our normal mode, the world has decided to respond to the COVID-19 threat long before it has reached its crisis. I am fascinated, but also concerned. As a society, we have chosen to self-administer a kind of global shock therapy, and if we are not careful, the consequences of the medicine will be greater than the disease.

I do not claim to know how to balance these conflicting forces, but I’ll bet health experts don’t have the interdisciplinary training to make that judgement either. In many ways, this pandemic looks a lot like climate change. If we do nothing now, it will be a disaster in a couple months. If we do too much now, it will be an economic disaster, which could be just as damaging.

Let’s consider the current situation. About 0.003% of the global population has been confirmed to have (or have had) the coronavirus. Across the US, it’s 0.005%; in New York, the hardest-hit state, the infection rate has gotten up to 0.03% (as of March 21). That’s confirmed cases, but it might be a decent approximation to the actual cases: Germany has prided itself with very thorough testing, and it has a 0.03% infection rate. The US has not been doing a very good job of testing, but still 8 tests are administered for every 1 that comes back positive.

So, let’s do a thought experiment with the confirmed cases: Let’s imagine getting a group of randomly chosen people from New York state together.If your group was 1 person big, there would be a 0.03% chance that that person has COVID-19. If it’s 2 people big, the chance that one or the other is sick would be 0.07%. For that risk to get up to 1%– at which point it might make sense to call off the gathering, there would need to be 28 people. For the chance that one or more of them were sick to reach 50%, the group would have to consist of about 2000 people.

It won’t stay this way. Without intervention the real crisis will hit around June. Here’s my simple model, which looks a lot like what the NYT has been showing for the past couple weeks, but I made it almost a month ago:

The disaster hasn’t come yet. We should think more about what we want to do to prepare between now and then.

The right balance depends not only the benefits of quarantine, but also on its economic costs. There are already estimates of the unemployment rate in the US doubling in the next couple months, and maybe going as high as 10%. We have set off an economic recession which is going to derail a lot of livelihoods, and for some people it will mean their lives. Add on top of that the physical and mental health problems that are emerging as a result of self-isolation, and the loss of in-class education for millions of students, and it looks like we have chosen to pay a very high price.

If we were to lock-down less, it would mean that more people could keep their jobs. More people would also get sick, but it would help in the long run as the population of people immune to the virus increases. Some of the extra infections would have to go to the hospital, but current COVID-19 infections are a tiny share of current hospital cases, and many regions can handle the extra load. Or, at least they can handle it a lot better now than they will be able to in a few months, during the peak crisis.

I’m not proposing that older people or other high-risk populations stop self-quarantining at all– COVID-19 is incredibly dangerous to people over 65. But we need more working-age people on the front lines, sustaining our economy.

The chance of dying is low for under-40s– 0.2%– but still high as these things go. That’s twice the death rate of the flu. But the economic recession will also lead to more deaths. I think we need a movement of people who are willing to personally accept the risks that come from an infection, for the benefits that they can provide. They should not interact with those people who are staying in isolation, but this group needs to extend far beyond “essential” workers.

By the way, this can also be a moment to help correct the injustices of the current economy: if we are choosing to risk our lives, we should not be doing it for the benefits of the powers-that-be. But that can be for another post.

I recently discovered all four seasons of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on Netflix, and now I’m fired up about making some surreal animations. I have a particular vision for a series on the life and times of James Rising, born 1618. It would be an inseparable mix of historical research and mythologizing, childhood and adult themes combined in Walt Disneyesque fashion, anarchy and anachronism, set in a surrealist pre-Steampunk world.

I’m envisioning this as an ever growing series of cel-animation episodes. The whole series would be divided into 5 chapters, of which I initially only aim to make a single episode for each chapter. [Really, I just want to make a single episode, but dividing it into 5 segments makes it seem more feasible.]

Here’s the story so far:

Chapter 1: In the shadow of Castle Rising

The Rising ancestors, not yet named Risings, live a peasant life in the Norfolk countryside. But everything is changing in Jacobean era for a young, rebellious youth who runs away to the big city, Norwich. There he falls in some counter-culture Catholic recusants, before realizing that no religion can ensure love. Turning his back on both his old home and his new one, he drives into the horizon.

Chapter 2: The childhood of a Cordwainer

James is born to Risings that have finally made it in the middle class of small-town Beccles. But the world is so much bigger now, and at 18, the other side of the world seems nearer to James than the small-minded village politics around him. A chance encounter with nobility ruins his internship and his reputation, and he finally packs his bags.

Chapter 3: By land and by sea

James hitchhikes to London, through many new lands and strange customs. Along the way, he befriends a world-weary ex-raver, an existentialist dog, and a recurring used-cart salesman. Each offers him the possibility of their way of life, and he barters each one away for passage on the Dorset, bound for Bermuda. After nearly starving on the boat, he’s saved by a rat named Sergeant Buzfuz, who becomes his life-long companion.

Chapter 4: Zeal for the zealots

Ten years of hard labor offer lots of pitfalls, and James’s favorites are drink, women, and religious experiments. He is struggling with depression when a friend’s cult decides to go off-the-grid and they convince James to come and help them. But the boat is wrecked on metaphor-heavy rocks, their cool-aid lost, and life without technology turns out to be pretty tough. The colony gives up, but James and Sergeant Buzfuz, now both bearded and world-weary, stow away on a boat to Boston.

Chapter 5: Englands Old and New

James uses his intrepid instinct for trouble to make a living in Boston. He falls madly in love with a lifestyle where anything is possible, and then he meets Elizabeth Hinsdale. Together they start a family, move to Connecticut, and try to avoid an irate used-cart salesmen. At the deathbed-side of Sergeant Buzfuz, James recounts the dreams of youth and his memories of the future.

I came upon this bit of literary engineering by D. M. Thomas in Best SF: 1969 (ed. Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss). I love the project idea, but I don’t endorse all the content.

“Elstir’s studio seemed like the laboratory out of which would come a kind of new creation of the world: from the chaos made of all things we see, he had abstracted, by painting them on various rectangles of canvas now standing about on all sides, glimpses of things, like a wave in the sea crashing its angry lilac shaded foam down on the sand, or a young man in white twill leaning on a ship’s rail. The young man’s jacket and the splash of the wave had taken on a new dignity, in virtue of the fact that they continued to exist, though now deprived of what they were believed to consist in, the wave being now unable to wet anyone, and the jacket unable to be worn.”

– In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Proust

I like to think I make art, sometimes, but all of my work exists only in this virtual Neverland. My works can be seen, but only through a glorified microfiche scanner, and if you choose to look to the right tiny speck. I wish I had a studio like Elstir’s where people could wander, with real hands tilting back real physical picture frames.

There’s a magic in printing things out, like a spell that reincarnates from the spirit-like 1s and 0s. Flame and I have over a dozen hand-picked photo albums from our various trips, ready should anyone care to open some memories. I want similar momentos for my projects. I thought for a while of building a converter that could represent the structures of code and data as intricate art. But no converter would see the beauty that I see in my own work.

So, I’m thinking of just printing and binding my papers (completed, whether published or not). I’m not above making them into mugs instead, or making blown-up figures etched in canvas. But the first step is to leave them leaning one on the other, and see if anyone takes a peak.