It looks like widespread border closures are inevitable now, and border policy will become even more visibly important if/when community transmission is brought under control in a country (e.g. as in China today where ~100% of new cases outside Hubei are imported). So I don’t think advocating for border closures is high leverage at the moment.
I agree that it’s super high leverage to get the public and policymakers to understand that it’s not too late for eradication (R0 < 1) through strong social distancing, and that it may be feasible to keep secondary epidemics controlled at social cost far below that of continued lockdown. [ETA: as far as I can tell there is near consensus on this point among vocal rationalists on Coronavirus Twitter, but I have seen no public official or advisor state or signal that they are looking in this direction at all.]
An important part of that will be running the numbers on something like Taleb’s proposal or your “Basically” paragraph. Ferguson et al. got quantitative results from their model & set of assumptions, so far the response has been mostly handwaving and pointing at case studies (where we have 2 months of data and are making claims around sustainable policy on 1-2 year scale).
So I don’t think advocating for border closures is high leverage at the moment.
No, I agree that it’s not super-high leverage, but still worth saying. I’m just emphasizing that I called for it back in January when it was super high-leverage.
An important part of that will be running the numbers on something like Taleb’s proposal
I would love to do this, but someone will have to pay me because I don’t have loads of time/money to spare. Alternatively someone else, perhaps a professional, will do this. Ideally they should already be doing it.
It looks like widespread border closures are inevitable now, and border policy will become even more visibly important if/when community transmission is brought under control in a country (e.g. as in China today where ~100% of new cases outside Hubei are imported). So I don’t think advocating for border closures is high leverage at the moment.
I agree that it’s super high leverage to get the public and policymakers to understand that it’s not too late for eradication (R0 < 1) through strong social distancing, and that it may be feasible to keep secondary epidemics controlled at social cost far below that of continued lockdown. [ETA: as far as I can tell there is near consensus on this point among vocal rationalists on Coronavirus Twitter, but I have seen no public official or advisor state or signal that they are looking in this direction at all.]
An important part of that will be running the numbers on something like Taleb’s proposal or your “Basically” paragraph. Ferguson et al. got quantitative results from their model & set of assumptions, so far the response has been mostly handwaving and pointing at case studies (where we have 2 months of data and are making claims around sustainable policy on 1-2 year scale).
No, I agree that it’s not super-high leverage, but still worth saying. I’m just emphasizing that I called for it back in January when it was super high-leverage.
I would love to do this, but someone will have to pay me because I don’t have loads of time/money to spare. Alternatively someone else, perhaps a professional, will do this. Ideally they should already be doing it.