There is a lot here to reply to, and I’m only going to address a few points.
First, on forecasting, I think there is a lot to discuss, and I think Johnwentsworth’s comment and my reply are all that I have to say about this for now.
Second, on Government response, I’m also unsure how much we disagree. I definitely think that I have a number of useful insights about institutions, but this is an area where expertise seems to be non-predictive. That means I’m less sure how valuable it is—but I discussed this in more depth here, on Ribbonfarm. That said, I’ll make comments anyways.
I agree that many countries were underprepared, but they also historically relied on American leadership for many of these types of events. America was the acknowledged world leader in biodefense and preparation, has spent more time and money on the problem than elsewhere, and has much more money and expertise than most places—so the failure is much more noteworthy than it otherwise would be.
I also think the EU “failures” should be counted as partial successes, since they mostly have case counts declining, and are well prepared to avoid the worst of a possible second wave. That’s a solid half credit in an absolute sense, since they seems poised to have gotten it under control before it ended up everywhere, though they didn’t catch it enough to prevent spread at first, which would have been the goal. The US (and to a lesser extent, the UK,) didn’t manage to control things enough to even get past the first wave, and they are poised to fail to herd immunity in most places—a shocking level of failure, especially given how well other countries have managed this.
For counterfactual predictions, on B, if the US did as well as Germany, Japan, France, and other G-7 nations, they would have kept deaths under 20,000, or at least around there. I’d give at least 50% to keeping it below 20k so far. (I’m unsure how bad the Republican Governors would have made this, or what the rest of the world looks like under Clinton. Would the Chinese have cooperated earlier? Counterfactual predictions this far back are basically about writing an alternative timeline—there are WAY too many potential issues to really consider well.) But the epidemic seems under control in the EU, contra the US. So that seems like the relevant counterfactual. (Aside: It seems non-coincidental, though a surprisingly strong effect, that right-wing populist leaders are especially bad at controlling infectious diseases—BoJo, Trump, and Putin all got this very, very wrong. I think the default reaction of trying to control the narrative over dealing with problems is a particularly dangerous approach with infectious diseases.) And for the A counterfactual, it’s similar, but with 20+% probability mass on “this was stopped enough before it left China that there was no pandemic.”
That European countries very much appear to have this under control
That they did much better than the US and Latin America
Right-wing populist leaders did worse than I expected, in a non-coincidental way (Brazil’s Bolsonaro is another example to add to the list).
“trying to control the narrative over dealing with problems is a particularly dangerous approach with infectious diseases” very strongly agreed. I’m a big fan of this write-up by NunoSempere, and this historian’s touching reflection on the Spanish flu.
I think it’s likely our disagreements are somewhat about framing than actual empirical differences. For example, “they seems poised to have gotten it under control before it ended up everywhere, though they didn’t catch it enough to prevent spread at first, which would have been the goal” is a phrase I’d use to describe South Korea and Singapore, not Western Europe, where almost every locale had community transmission. I’d use “they caught it enough to prevent spread” to describe places like Mongolia with zero or close to zero community transmission, or contained community transmission to a single region.
I agree that Western European governments should get a lot of relative credit for managing to prevent more deaths, disability, and wanton economic destruction, despite being in an initially bad spot. But thousands of people nonetheless died, and those deaths appeared to be largely preventable (in a practical, humanly doable sense). So while I think we should also a) emphasize the relative successes (because in these dark times it’s good to both hold on to hope and be grateful for what we have), and b) be unequivocally clear that the other Western governments mostly did better than the US, I do want to not lose sight of the target and also be clear that the relative failings of the US under Trump does not excuse the lesser failings of other institutions and governments.
There is a lot here to reply to, and I’m only going to address a few points.
First, on forecasting, I think there is a lot to discuss, and I think Johnwentsworth’s comment and my reply are all that I have to say about this for now.
Second, on Government response, I’m also unsure how much we disagree. I definitely think that I have a number of useful insights about institutions, but this is an area where expertise seems to be non-predictive. That means I’m less sure how valuable it is—but I discussed this in more depth here, on Ribbonfarm. That said, I’ll make comments anyways.
I agree that many countries were underprepared, but they also historically relied on American leadership for many of these types of events. America was the acknowledged world leader in biodefense and preparation, has spent more time and money on the problem than elsewhere, and has much more money and expertise than most places—so the failure is much more noteworthy than it otherwise would be.
I also think the EU “failures” should be counted as partial successes, since they mostly have case counts declining, and are well prepared to avoid the worst of a possible second wave. That’s a solid half credit in an absolute sense, since they seems poised to have gotten it under control before it ended up everywhere, though they didn’t catch it enough to prevent spread at first, which would have been the goal. The US (and to a lesser extent, the UK,) didn’t manage to control things enough to even get past the first wave, and they are poised to fail to herd immunity in most places—a shocking level of failure, especially given how well other countries have managed this.
For counterfactual predictions, on B, if the US did as well as Germany, Japan, France, and other G-7 nations, they would have kept deaths under 20,000, or at least around there. I’d give at least 50% to keeping it below 20k so far. (I’m unsure how bad the Republican Governors would have made this, or what the rest of the world looks like under Clinton. Would the Chinese have cooperated earlier? Counterfactual predictions this far back are basically about writing an alternative timeline—there are WAY too many potential issues to really consider well.) But the epidemic seems under control in the EU, contra the US. So that seems like the relevant counterfactual. (Aside: It seems non-coincidental, though a surprisingly strong effect, that right-wing populist leaders are especially bad at controlling infectious diseases—BoJo, Trump, and Putin all got this very, very wrong. I think the default reaction of trying to control the narrative over dealing with problems is a particularly dangerous approach with infectious diseases.) And for the A counterfactual, it’s similar, but with 20+% probability mass on “this was stopped enough before it left China that there was no pandemic.”
I agree with the following points:
That European countries very much appear to have this under control
That they did much better than the US and Latin America
Right-wing populist leaders did worse than I expected, in a non-coincidental way (Brazil’s Bolsonaro is another example to add to the list).
“trying to control the narrative over dealing with problems is a particularly dangerous approach with infectious diseases” very strongly agreed. I’m a big fan of this write-up by NunoSempere, and this historian’s touching reflection on the Spanish flu.
I think it’s likely our disagreements are somewhat about framing than actual empirical differences. For example, “they seems poised to have gotten it under control before it ended up everywhere, though they didn’t catch it enough to prevent spread at first, which would have been the goal” is a phrase I’d use to describe South Korea and Singapore, not Western Europe, where almost every locale had community transmission. I’d use “they caught it enough to prevent spread” to describe places like Mongolia with zero or close to zero community transmission, or contained community transmission to a single region.
I agree that Western European governments should get a lot of relative credit for managing to prevent more deaths, disability, and wanton economic destruction, despite being in an initially bad spot. But thousands of people nonetheless died, and those deaths appeared to be largely preventable (in a practical, humanly doable sense). So while I think we should also a) emphasize the relative successes (because in these dark times it’s good to both hold on to hope and be grateful for what we have), and b) be unequivocally clear that the other Western governments mostly did better than the US, I do want to not lose sight of the target and also be clear that the relative failings of the US under Trump does not excuse the lesser failings of other institutions and governments.