So much social distancing at Walt Disney World

But that doesn’t mean that Disney doesn’t just care about money. That’s probably true- or effectively true anyway (especially from their track record and little park policies like... not allowing emergency responders access to the main park to not “spoil” it for guests- or of transporting guests to a secluded medical area before administering aid as opposed to treating them on site of where an emergency occurs.)

All told- at the end of the day- there are a TON of things that are not nearly as safe or effective as they could be at combatting Corona. TBH- there isn’t a practical way to allow people any measure of ability to even do basic tasks in public and even approach 100% safety- and to be really “serious” about stoping it- total isolation would be the only measure that was truly apt. But....

That would t be very practical, and would certainly upset people, cause unrest, and really mess up the economy and quality of life. I’ve done physical security, Digital, events, infrastructure, consulting, government. And the fact is that most security... it’s a compromise.

Passwords- finding ways to enforce passwords that are hard for machines to guess and that humans can’t guess- that people can remember... and then changing them as often as they should be changed.... and then you have to deal with the fact that the password holder is themselves a vulnerability- they can write them down or share them, stay logged in- all sorts of crap. Help desk or whoever can change or recover passwords is a vulnerability... by the time you lock the system down even IF it’s un breakable (doesn’t really exist..) no one can do their jobs. People are pissed, and your policies get overturned by someone who isn’t in security but is in authority.

Screening people- metal detectors aren’t perfect and... as the name implies don’t do so hot on non Metallics. Fill body scans can miss things. People can hide things, the person working the scanner can be distracted or just careless, stripping people naked and doing full cavity searches and using sniffers and dope strips to check for any chemicals you missed and... all that precaution and they can still outsmart you- or a mistake can be made by a human, or a machine can mess up and let something through. And not only would Joe Everman raise a fit of a flight involved a prostate exam- how would you move traffic through JFK at peak holiday times and do that? How would you get every world leader and their spouse and every rich donor to do that to be in the room with a president?

At some point- you have to weight the threat and the consequences and the odds- and balance how far you’re going to go to add extra assurances- and no matter what you do you’re never 100%- you are piling on cost and complexity and inconvenience and inefficiency and likely some aggravation- for .0001 percent increments in potential safety.

Think of it this way- it’s not so much different than screening for bombs. If you pile up 1,000 people BEFORE screening in line to enter a park or a plane- then you screen them all carefully before entry, and you’re queueing them up between points- any point before or during screening where they haven’t been cleared but are queued in mass- that’s a huge danger as you’ve got these groups of 50 people or 10 or whatever- and one of them could be the weapon that kills the rest. Better than 1,000 but still more than the goal.

So with a virus- 100 people waiting in line- you let 50 through after complete screening- all are clear. You get to 51- they test sick. Well.... that means the 50 you cleared may have been exposed and may be contagious or days away. If you clear 100 and no one triggers a positive- but just one was infected and asymptomatic- same deal. The ONLY way to deal with mass numbers of people like that in a contagion would be to keep every single one separate, and then isolate and observe them, confirm they are clear after the maximum contagion period from when you started observation- and THEN clear them. That’s a long wait in line every time you go out.

If this were some “sneaky Ebola” or something- we might do that. But it isn’t. This is where some of the crack pots and ignorant get it somewhat right. We have a contagion that is pretty easily spread but isn’t insanely contagious. It’s deadly but it has a relatively low mortality rate. It’s got all sorts of serious complications and lingering problems- but by the numbers it isn’t the same as having some Hollywood imaginary super virus loose.

So if we split he middle ground- allow people some freedom and say that this thing isn’t exactly a bio weapon as far as how dangerous it is- BUT it is deadly, and if it spreads unchecked would likely kill hundreds of millions of people in a short span- there are precautions we can take that aren’t as effective as total world wide home quarantine of every living being, or mandarin hazard suits, or grouping people into numbers and only allowing people from certain numbers out at the same time together on designate days or what not- but they are much more effective than nothing.

But I can’t blame Disney, a for profit capitalist company, too much. My advice to most folks- don’t go to Disney right now. Don’t go to the park. And realizing that there are people out there who are going to a crowded theme park in a pandemic, and some of those people could go to your grocery store or your local places- don’t go out more than you really need to. If you see people you don’t live with- make sure they are smart about things too. Make sure they don’t run off to Disney and go to house parties with 20+ strangers.