Those countries that introduced one of the first quarantines have one more advantage that is not obvious at first glance - the power of the moment.
Obviously, around the tenth of March, the world is experiencing an emotional peak. These days, right now is the worst moment for an alien visit.
- I'm Lrrrrr - the ruler of the planet Omicron Perseus 8, the Earth is enslaved! - Wait, why are you without a mask?
If you wanted to annex a piece of foreign territory, start a nuclear war, ethnic genocide - friends, there will be no second such chance.
There is one piece of news to compete with now - how to fry meatballs on the threshold of Ikea.
But very soon the effect will pass. Now someone will say again that I am downplaying the scale of the problem. But no. It's just that people are so arranged. The death of one person is a tragedy, ten - a disaster, thousands - an apocalypse, one hundred thousand - an event, a million - news, ten million - statistics.
On the one hand, this “feeling of wartime” is terribly attractive, on the other, it quickly tires. Read the memories of the inhabitants of Moscow and Leningrad, after a couple of months of bombing - the children did not wake up from them already.
This effect was observed by Americans in 2001. Throughout September and October, there was simply no other news besides an unidentified subject at the bus stop and the color of the terrorist threat level, people lived on CNN. And in November, everyone was sick of it.
The success of today's quarantine measures, the outstanding consciousness of citizens - is 90% guaranteed by this media horror. It may seem to some that these are the successes of the police. But they just have problems with scale. At the moment when the significant majority of Muscovites say: tired, you can’t live in four walls, God will not give out - you won’t eat a pig - even the mega-redundant Russian police, together with the Russian Guard, will simply dissolve in this mass.
Obviously, the transition of the emotional peak to apathy and indifference when the word “Coronavirus” becomes a curse, not attracting, but frightening away the audience, is a matter of the very near future.
This will be an interesting moment in which I still have little idea of how attempts to maintain a “self-isolation regime” will look like.
Original here