I’ve never considered prophylactically quarantining myself before, but now that I’m considering it I find it contains many more choices than I would have imagined. Let’s take my need to eat- I could go to a supermarket, but that’s full of people. I could get delivery, but that still has a human touch. I could eat my stores, but then I won’t have them later. This makes “when do I stop ordering delivery?” an important question. To attempt a more informed answer, I made a guesstimate model. As of writing this (2/27) the numbers are completely made up: I just wanted to get comments on the underlying model. I’m working to fill in the variables with actual answers. If you want to follow along you can do so at my Roam page. I am exceedingly grateful for comments on either the abstract model or information that could help me fill in variables.

Here are some general factors going into my thinking:

1. COVID-19 seems to have a long dormant period during which people are contagious but not symptomatic
2. Some additional portion of people have only mild symptoms
3. The economics of pink-collar work are such that a lot of people will go to work until they are on death’s door.
4. 1+2+3 = if the virus is prevalent in the population, there will be a lot of contagious people handling stuff I order.
5. The American government’s monitoring provides, at best, an extremely lagging indicator of prevalence, and is at worst made up.

Here are images of the model and Roam page now, for posterity

Note that this shows food delivery as less risky than package delivery, which is clearly wrong.