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It does a lot of good. Every little intervention really helps, even if it's seems far from perfect.

It's because the system as a whole is balanced on a critical threshold. It's like water boils at 101°C and condenses at 99°C.

The point is to reduce R below 1. When R > 1 the disease gets almost everywhere eventually. When R < 1 the disease fades away and most people don't get infected.

Currently R is above 1, but it's not a lot above 1. (We're lucky. There are other diseases where it's much higher.)

So even if you have been spreading on those 4 days, you are not spreading from days 5 onwards. That might be 10 days less spreading.

You are not giving it to large numbers of people in those 4 days either. As a spreader, you're adding risk to others, but only 1 or 2 will get it directly from you probably.

When you isolate on day 5, that's a reduction in the amount of spreading and it reduces R. When your traces also isolate from your day 5, that's a further reduction in the amount of spreading and R. That's recursive, if their traces also isolate, it's a further reduction, etc.

Altogether, if everyone follows these changes, there's a reasonable prospect of R falling below 1 enough for the disease to fade out. Because it's close enough to 1 already, that behaviour can make a significant difference.

In practice people do not comply, and they lie sometimes (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-55011790). So R does not fall as effectively as it would if there was high compliance. But every bit of compliance helps reduce R.

When R is consistently < 1 due to social changes, regular testing and behaviour changes in response (even with days of delay), tracing, social distancing and masks and workplace changes and commute changes, etc. then we will find the disease fades away.

It looks unlikely this will happen until we have widespread vaccination in some countries (USA is one of the leading examples), but the more we reduce R meanwhile, the fewer people will die or get long covid in the end. And fewer here means in the millions.



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