Thinking about how to act during the pandemic is very important. Tbh I dislike some aspects of this post. Some parts of it seem very emotion-fueled and political.
For example:
Governments Most Places Are Lying Liars With No Ability To Plan or Physically Reason. They Can’t Even Stop Interfering and Killing People
This seems to be a very angloamerican thing. Here in europe things are bad (e. g. Norway, Italy, …) but overall, our political system seems to apply appropriate force when required. Badly struck areas are in lockdown while other areas have open restaurants and open zoos. Sure, not every decision will be right, but listening to science and cooperating across borders really helps.
So for me, this post seems to spread a lot of FUD, something which is pretty hurtful to some people when they feel lack of control and physical isolation. Maybe we can compile this into a resource on how to understand exponential risk, superspreader theory and how to interpret the current research which is done on the SARS-CoV2 virus. Because let’s be honest: most people suck at understanding epidemics (we call the few remaining people “epidemiologist” and there’s a reason why they’re spend so many years in uni). Let’s not make the mistake and become hobby-epidemiologists.
One can certainly defend South Korea and other non-Western countries. And certainly one can defend European countries compared to USA/England or to each other. Definitely one can say that some of them, once Italy happened, did a non-insane job of “shut things down across the board until things get better than try opening them up again” if you think that you have no other policy tools to work with.
I don’t think one can defend their performance against the standards of ’did what was likely to actually do the least harm based on physical considerations, and didn’t lie about the situation to their public.”
I do think that understanding the distinction is vital to understanding our pandemic, including our potential future responses, and therefore what one should do personally. To me this isn’t vague FUD, it’s predicting that such failures will continue.
I disagree with your last few sentences. We really don’t have infinite resources to spend doing ineffective covid interventions. For example, If the evidence strongly supports that finite transmission is rare that influences my behavior. If the evidence strongly suggests immunity does exist, that changes at least my stock portfolio. We shouldn’t overstate our certainty about complicated issues but it is useful. For example, understanding transmission influenced me not to go to the protests (people packed together chanting high transmission risk) but to start playing frisbee outdoors (fomite in sun low transmission risk).
Part of the problem was revealed by the “we have no immunity until it is proven for this specific strain” articles. A lot of public health info sources are too frequentist, so with limited info they prefer to say nothing. So a little Bayesian reference class and updating can go a long way.
Thinking about how to act during the pandemic is very important. Tbh I dislike some aspects of this post. Some parts of it seem very emotion-fueled and political.
For example:
This seems to be a very angloamerican thing. Here in europe things are bad (e. g. Norway, Italy, …) but overall, our political system seems to apply appropriate force when required. Badly struck areas are in lockdown while other areas have open restaurants and open zoos. Sure, not every decision will be right, but listening to science and cooperating across borders really helps.
So for me, this post seems to spread a lot of FUD, something which is pretty hurtful to some people when they feel lack of control and physical isolation. Maybe we can compile this into a resource on how to understand exponential risk, superspreader theory and how to interpret the current research which is done on the SARS-CoV2 virus. Because let’s be honest: most people suck at understanding epidemics (we call the few remaining people “epidemiologist” and there’s a reason why they’re spend so many years in uni). Let’s not make the mistake and become hobby-epidemiologists.
One can certainly defend South Korea and other non-Western countries. And certainly one can defend European countries compared to USA/England or to each other. Definitely one can say that some of them, once Italy happened, did a non-insane job of “shut things down across the board until things get better than try opening them up again” if you think that you have no other policy tools to work with.
I don’t think one can defend their performance against the standards of ’did what was likely to actually do the least harm based on physical considerations, and didn’t lie about the situation to their public.”
I do think that understanding the distinction is vital to understanding our pandemic, including our potential future responses, and therefore what one should do personally. To me this isn’t vague FUD, it’s predicting that such failures will continue.
I disagree with your last few sentences. We really don’t have infinite resources to spend doing ineffective covid interventions. For example, If the evidence strongly supports that finite transmission is rare that influences my behavior. If the evidence strongly suggests immunity does exist, that changes at least my stock portfolio. We shouldn’t overstate our certainty about complicated issues but it is useful. For example, understanding transmission influenced me not to go to the protests (people packed together chanting high transmission risk) but to start playing frisbee outdoors (fomite in sun low transmission risk).
Part of the problem was revealed by the “we have no immunity until it is proven for this specific strain” articles. A lot of public health info sources are too frequentist, so with limited info they prefer to say nothing. So a little Bayesian reference class and updating can go a long way.