Excellent post, thank you for writing this! I’ve been meaning to write up something similar, about my opinion on the public response to COVID-19 and a few future predictions. I think this comment section is a perfect place for this, and I’ll write my own thoughts as a response to yours. My experiences are not based on the situation in the USA.
As a disclaimer, my predictions are among the most pessimistic of all the ones I’m seeing people discuss. Consider it the bottom pit of the Overton window. Having expectations that COVID-19 will be worse than people are thinking so far can and does have negative effects on your mental health, so be careful (and stop reading). I’d love to be proven wrong.
Risks Follow Power Laws
Amazingly written, I did not give this enough thought. I should stop doing my own grocery shopping, and have it delivered instead.
Sacrifices To The Gods Are Demanded Everywhere
I agree fully. Your steelman hits quite close to the mark in my opinion. I want to add that if everybody has internalised that ‘pleasing the Gods’ is the way to respond (to anything, really), then this actually becomes the correct way for authorities to write guidelines – anything else will just add another layer of translation.
Governments Most Places Are Lying Liars With No Ability To Plan or Physically Reason. They Can’t Even Stop Interfering and Killing People
Yes.
Silence is Golden
I am completely unsure on the relative importance of this, compared to other risk factors. How much of the spread are you willing to attribute to this? Have there been studies on this?
Surfaces Are Mostly Harmless
I have been keeping all packages that arrived in a sealed plastic bag for 24 hours before opening (like a Good Boy), I guess that was stupid. Reading this paragraph changed my mind.
Food Is Mostly Harmless
Yeah, this all makes sense.
Outdoor Activity Is Relatively Harmless
As does this.
Masks Are Effective, And Even Cloth Ones Are Almost Enough
I totally disagree with this. Where are the numbers coming from? I consider cloth masks closer to a Sacrifice to the Gods than a real countermeasure.
Six Feet Is An Arbitrary Number, People Aren’t Treating It That Way, And That’s Terrible
You have this one completely backwards. People really really are not able to make risk assessments and benefit analyses. This world you describe, where the rule is taken as a best point estimate, and people interpret the ‘6 feet’ as anything else than a Boolean yes/no question, was never going to happen. I consider the current public awareness of the importance of keeping distance an amazing improvement on the status quo before this rule went public. You mention this (as the opening sentence, in fact). I disagree with any suggestion that we could plausibly do better collectively.
Herd Immunity Comes Well Before 75% Infected and Partial Herd Immunity Is Super Valuable
This is a very good point, but can you explain the numbers you give below? I have no intuition on what typical spread in personal infection risk is (sure, the range is large, but we also need the frequencies with which these high risks are taken).
Yes, We Know People Who Have Been Infected Are Immune
I agree fully.
Our Lack of Experimentation Is Still Completely Insane
Agreed.
We Should Be Spending Vastly More on Vaccines, Testing and Other Medical Solutions
I agree here, except with the last line. With all the regression to the mean the current medical system is experiencing, it is totally unclear to me how we would plausibly create a vaccine on a short (“a few months”) timescales.
R0 Under American-Style Lockdown Conditions Defaults To Just Under One, Which New York Escaped Via Partial Herd Immunity
Another great observation, and I’ll reply in more detail in a separate post..
The Default Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) Is 0.5%-1%, Depending on Conditions
There has been discussion of this on LessWrong before, and I agree.
Typically in America, 33% of Deaths and 90% of Infections Are Missed
This sounds like the correct order of magnitude for both, and also agrees with my estimates for the under-reporting in the official numbers where I live.
People Don’t Modify Behavior In Response To Re-Openings All That Much, When Given a Choice
This title is a very important (positive) remark, because it suggests (contrary to what I personally believe) that it might be possible to resume a lot of activities almost as normal while maintaining R0<1. I agree that the situation for schools is uniquely bad, and unfortunately I can tell you from personal experience this is one of the places completely infected with making Sacrifices to the Gods. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
It’s Out of Our Hands
When was this window for people in authority? Looking back I honestly think we were never capable of dodging this disaster (our society isn’t adequate at the level of saving people during a pandemic).
it is totally unclear to me how we would plausibly create a vaccine on a short (“a few months”) timescales.
“Create a vaccine” is somewhat ambiguous. There are already several (dozens?) of vaccines undergoing clinical trials so, in one sense, we’ve already created vaccines. There are several vaccine technologies that are well understood that can be used to quickly produce a vaccine. In the sense of developing, producing (at scale), and administering a vaccine – to a large number of people – that’s (much) less plausible (or possible) given ‘civilizational (in)adequacy’.
Excellent post, thank you for writing this! I’ve been meaning to write up something similar, about my opinion on the public response to COVID-19 and a few future predictions. I think this comment section is a perfect place for this, and I’ll write my own thoughts as a response to yours. My experiences are not based on the situation in the USA.
As a disclaimer, my predictions are among the most pessimistic of all the ones I’m seeing people discuss. Consider it the bottom pit of the Overton window. Having expectations that COVID-19 will be worse than people are thinking so far can and does have negative effects on your mental health, so be careful (and stop reading). I’d love to be proven wrong.
Amazingly written, I did not give this enough thought. I should stop doing my own grocery shopping, and have it delivered instead.
I agree fully. Your steelman hits quite close to the mark in my opinion. I want to add that if everybody has internalised that ‘pleasing the Gods’ is the way to respond (to anything, really), then this actually becomes the correct way for authorities to write guidelines – anything else will just add another layer of translation.
Yes.
I am completely unsure on the relative importance of this, compared to other risk factors. How much of the spread are you willing to attribute to this? Have there been studies on this?
I have been keeping all packages that arrived in a sealed plastic bag for 24 hours before opening (like a Good Boy), I guess that was stupid. Reading this paragraph changed my mind.
Yeah, this all makes sense.
As does this.
I totally disagree with this. Where are the numbers coming from? I consider cloth masks closer to a Sacrifice to the Gods than a real countermeasure.
You have this one completely backwards. People really really are not able to make risk assessments and benefit analyses. This world you describe, where the rule is taken as a best point estimate, and people interpret the ‘6 feet’ as anything else than a Boolean yes/no question, was never going to happen. I consider the current public awareness of the importance of keeping distance an amazing improvement on the status quo before this rule went public. You mention this (as the opening sentence, in fact). I disagree with any suggestion that we could plausibly do better collectively.
This is a very good point, but can you explain the numbers you give below? I have no intuition on what typical spread in personal infection risk is (sure, the range is large, but we also need the frequencies with which these high risks are taken).
I agree fully.
Agreed.
I agree here, except with the last line. With all the regression to the mean the current medical system is experiencing, it is totally unclear to me how we would plausibly create a vaccine on a short (“a few months”) timescales.
Another great observation, and I’ll reply in more detail in a separate post..
There has been discussion of this on LessWrong before, and I agree.
This sounds like the correct order of magnitude for both, and also agrees with my estimates for the under-reporting in the official numbers where I live.
This title is a very important (positive) remark, because it suggests (contrary to what I personally believe) that it might be possible to resume a lot of activities almost as normal while maintaining R0<1. I agree that the situation for schools is uniquely bad, and unfortunately I can tell you from personal experience this is one of the places completely infected with making Sacrifices to the Gods. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
When was this window for people in authority? Looking back I honestly think we were never capable of dodging this disaster (our society isn’t adequate at the level of saving people during a pandemic).
“Create a vaccine” is somewhat ambiguous. There are already several (dozens?) of vaccines undergoing clinical trials so, in one sense, we’ve already created vaccines. There are several vaccine technologies that are well understood that can be used to quickly produce a vaccine. In the sense of developing, producing (at scale), and administering a vaccine – to a large number of people – that’s (much) less plausible (or possible) given ‘civilizational (in)adequacy’.