Meanwhile, China is confident enough in its candidate to use it for its military. That’s not something one does without high confidence in safety and a strong prior that it’s likely to work.
That makes sense for most countries, but my model of China is that they would be pretty willing to do it even if on low-ish confidence.
Sports
One big downside that I think you have to factor in is that a return to sports would signal a return to normalcy, which would make people less careful about wearing masks and stuff, and also probably influence policy-makers to be less careful.
That may not be a huge deal if you’re correct about where this is headed though. It seems that the endgame is to have herd immunity save us, and that we’re not too far away from it. I guess the big thing would be keeping the curve flat enough so that hospitals don’t get overwhelmed in the meantime, so the question is to what extent sports would move us away from that.
I assume China is at least doing a cost-benefit—it’s risky and expensive to do the vaccinations, and it’s not a great source of information on whether it works, so the benefits at that scale are mostly because you think it will likely work. I agree that it’s much less evidence than if e.g. Germany were doing it!
I dunno if seeing sports played to empty stadiums signals much of a return to normality. I agree that sports shutting down was a big wake-up call, and helped a lot, but I think every game will have a definite air of ‘things are not normal’ when they pan to empty fan sections, see the sidelines full of masks and distancing, and talk about which teams have had testing concerns. It might even model good behavior.
Ah ok, I wasn’t thinking about that part. I assumed that it would be trivial in comparison to the prestige and money they’d get if it worked. I was thinking more about how much they care about harming people.
I dunno if seeing sports played to empty stadiums signals much of a return to normality.
My guess is that even with the empty stadiums it would be at least a moderate push for people away from being careful, but I don’t feel particularly confident in that.
That makes sense for most countries, but my model of China is that they would be pretty willing to do it even if on low-ish confidence.
One big downside that I think you have to factor in is that a return to sports would signal a return to normalcy, which would make people less careful about wearing masks and stuff, and also probably influence policy-makers to be less careful.
That may not be a huge deal if you’re correct about where this is headed though. It seems that the endgame is to have herd immunity save us, and that we’re not too far away from it. I guess the big thing would be keeping the curve flat enough so that hospitals don’t get overwhelmed in the meantime, so the question is to what extent sports would move us away from that.
I assume China is at least doing a cost-benefit—it’s risky and expensive to do the vaccinations, and it’s not a great source of information on whether it works, so the benefits at that scale are mostly because you think it will likely work. I agree that it’s much less evidence than if e.g. Germany were doing it!
I dunno if seeing sports played to empty stadiums signals much of a return to normality. I agree that sports shutting down was a big wake-up call, and helped a lot, but I think every game will have a definite air of ‘things are not normal’ when they pan to empty fan sections, see the sidelines full of masks and distancing, and talk about which teams have had testing concerns. It might even model good behavior.
Ah ok, I wasn’t thinking about that part. I assumed that it would be trivial in comparison to the prestige and money they’d get if it worked. I was thinking more about how much they care about harming people.
My guess is that even with the empty stadiums it would be at least a moderate push for people away from being careful, but I don’t feel particularly confident in that.