A Covid-19 House Arrest Failure Mode

Recently I came across a disturbing bit of news, the headline reads: Ky. couple on house arrest after not signing positive COVID-19 self-isolation order.

Putting aside the obvious objections (“fascism” etc.), here’s why even those who think COVID-19 is the worst thing may want to avoid “locking up healthy people” as a policy:

  1. The news of people being placed under house arrest because a machine claims they’re infected with something (whether or not they have symptoms), will cause people — especially healthy/asymptomatic people — to stop getting tested.
  2. If more healthy people stop getting tested, it means the tests will be biased much more in favor of the sick.
  3. This means the CFR (case-fatality-rate) will increase. As of the writing of this post, the Kentucky CFR is 2.87% according to covidtracking.com.
  4. If the CFR appears to increase significantly, mainstream media will likely run headlines of the following sort: “COVID-19 Mutates Into More Fatal Strain As Mortality Rate Rises!”
  5. People will begin to panic, thinking the virus is now much deadlier than we thought before.
  6. This will result in more draconian measures being taken, more people being isolated under house arrest who shouldn’t be, and possibly resulting in an even higher CFR.

Now, if, on the other hand, your goal is to put more healthy people under house arrest and sow chaos and destruction, then this is certainly a fantastic way to go about it!

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