(Sorry, coming to this thread rather late.) Is, or was, anyone actually saying anything that amounted to “we are safe, therefore precautions are unnecessary”? What I’ve heard people saying is more like “we are safe enough with our current level of precautions, therefore such-and-such an extra precaution is unnecessary”. Or ”… therefore there is no need for us to panic about the danger we face from Ebola”.
Is, or was, anyone actually saying anything that amounted to “we are safe, therefore precautions are unnecessary”?
Not that I can point to. I may just be pattern-matching.
What I’ve heard people saying is more like “we are safe enough with our current level of precautions, therefore such-and-such an extra precaution is unnecessary”.
Which pattern-matches to raise the question, do people saying that know what the current precautions are?
If there’s good enough evidence that we’re safe enough as we are, I think it’s possible to say it without knowing what the current precautions are. (Just as someone can say “my computer is fast enough for what I use it for” even if they have no idea of its clock speed, memory latency, instruction set architecture, etc.)
I know what I would expect to observe if my computer weren’t fast enough (even in the absence of looking at technical specs), but I don’t know what I would expect to notice if I were safe in the absence of actually looking at the precautions that are being taken.
The closest thing I can come to that is observing that nothing disastrous has happened yet, but that’s not especially well-correlated with actual safety.
So… what kind of evidence are you envisioning here?
I’m envisioning observing that nothing even very bad has happened yet, which I think is in fact pretty well correlated with actual safety.
It’s not the same thing, for sure. But it’s probably all we have, on any side of the debate, and it seems to me to support the “no need for panic” side better than the “lock down all the borders and quarantine everyone arriving from Africa” side.
There usual context for this example is a conversation about relying on historical data and not paying too much attention to “external” (or “meta” or “structural” or… etc.) factors.
Is, or was, anyone actually saying anything that amounted to “we are safe, therefore precautions are unnecessary”? What I’ve heard people saying is more like “we are safe enough with our current level of precautions, therefore such-and-such an extra precaution is unnecessary”.
This has the Chesterton’s post problem. What do you mean by “our current level of precautions”? Do they include the existing provisions for quarantine in case of emergencies?
They include whatever is being done now. Which appears to be something like: don’t try to block or delay entry from affected countries wholesale; get people arriving from places affected by Ebola to monitor themselves for a while after travelling and take appropriate action if they suspect infection; etc.
This all seems to be working OK.
Of course the situation could change in ways that justified large-scale quarantining, but I’m not aware of any reason to expect that it will.
(Sorry, coming to this thread rather late.) Is, or was, anyone actually saying anything that amounted to “we are safe, therefore precautions are unnecessary”? What I’ve heard people saying is more like “we are safe enough with our current level of precautions, therefore such-and-such an extra precaution is unnecessary”. Or ”… therefore there is no need for us to panic about the danger we face from Ebola”.
Not that I can point to. I may just be pattern-matching.
Which pattern-matches to raise the question, do people saying that know what the current precautions are?
If there’s good enough evidence that we’re safe enough as we are, I think it’s possible to say it without knowing what the current precautions are. (Just as someone can say “my computer is fast enough for what I use it for” even if they have no idea of its clock speed, memory latency, instruction set architecture, etc.)
I know what I would expect to observe if my computer weren’t fast enough (even in the absence of looking at technical specs), but I don’t know what I would expect to notice if I were safe in the absence of actually looking at the precautions that are being taken.
The closest thing I can come to that is observing that nothing disastrous has happened yet, but that’s not especially well-correlated with actual safety.
So… what kind of evidence are you envisioning here?
I’m envisioning observing that nothing even very bad has happened yet, which I think is in fact pretty well correlated with actual safety.
It’s not the same thing, for sure. But it’s probably all we have, on any side of the debate, and it seems to me to support the “no need for panic” side better than the “lock down all the borders and quarantine everyone arriving from Africa” side.
OK. Thanks for clarifying.
The classic counter-example involves a turkey in the middle of November. Nothing very bad has happened to it ever—must be very safe, then...
Sure. As with everything else in the universe, we have to make do with partial information and sometimes it’ll lead us astray.
There is a bit more wisdom here :-)
There usual context for this example is a conversation about relying on historical data and not paying too much attention to “external” (or “meta” or “structural” or… etc.) factors.
This has the Chesterton’s post problem. What do you mean by “our current level of precautions”? Do they include the existing provisions for quarantine in case of emergencies?
They include whatever is being done now. Which appears to be something like: don’t try to block or delay entry from affected countries wholesale; get people arriving from places affected by Ebola to monitor themselves for a while after travelling and take appropriate action if they suspect infection; etc.
This all seems to be working OK.
Of course the situation could change in ways that justified large-scale quarantining, but I’m not aware of any reason to expect that it will.