Only 1 in 5 stayed home developing COVID symptoms

In King County, Washington, the county government announced today that contact tracing has learned that only one out of every five people developing COVID symptoms are self-isolating.

80% of people showing presumptive symptoms continue to circulate in the community.

It’s too easy to yell at people and say “stay home, fools!” But the question is: *why* do people continue to circulate with symptoms? Is it because they have to continue working? Have they gotten mixed messages?

I think it was a big miss in this country to not support individual households and small businesses with direct economic support to make sure people weren’t put in no-win situations where they had to risk their health to make sure they have a roof over their heads. Many developed countries have done this, and the United States decided to spent the vast majority of its economic stimulus on large corporations in a giveaway with no transparency.

You want to mitigate the economic crisis? You want to mitigate the health crisis? Providing direct income and security to individuals and small businesses would have encouraged people to stay home, especially those who are most vulnerable to spreading Covid, and it would keep small businesses from going under.

Thing is, it probably would have been cheaper than the two trillion that was dumped into the stock market.

Again, the United States had the power to incentivize behaviors that would protect both public health *and* the economic security of households. They just chose not to.

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