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notoriously difficult to find people who are carrying the pathogen but aren't showing symptoms; NPIs help prevent them from spreading COVID just as well as people who are symptomatic I don't mean to suggest that NPIs are a painless solution. While some, such as wearing masks, have few downsides for most people, others--like closing businesses and stopping big public gatherings--have a huge impact on the public, and implementing them is a massive undertaking. But we can do them right away, and we know how to do them better than we did before. Let's go through some of the top insights from the past two years. "If it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing." That's a quote from Tony Fauci, and I agree. The irony of NPIs is that the better they work, the easier it is to criticize the people who adopted them. If a city or state adopts them early enough, the case numbers will stay low, and critics will find it easy to say they weren't necessary. For example, in March 2020, officials in the city and county of St. Louis took several steps to limit transmission, including a shelter-in-place order. As a result, the initial outbreak in St. Louis was not as severe as it was in many other U.S. cities, leading some to suggest that the policies were an overreaction. But one study found that if the government had implemented the very same interventions just two weeks later, the number of deaths would have shot up sixfold. St. Louis would have been on par with some of the hardest hit areas in the country. <~?~Insert art 020a_Gate_9780593534489_art_r1> <~?~Insert art 020b_Gate_9780593534489_art_r1>