#EXAMPLE Both of the major US tribes had fabricated options in their recommendations.
One tribe said “it’s a choice between [everyone dying] and [locking down for a few weeks while the Competent Government Machinery That Definitely Exists gets a solid response together]!” and the other tribe said “it’s a choice between [the death of the economy and also liberty as we know it] and [a small but inevitable sacrifice in lives that were going to end soon anyway while everything continues largely as normal]!”
And maybe tribe no. 3 saying “it’s a choice between [this completely idiotic politics-driven policies we see] and [obviously much better policy I have described in this document, which could be implemented easily if only the actual government would let sensible scientist-policymakers thinking like myself do the job and guard it from anything that could derail their benevolent behavior]”.
Option number 3 seems like more-or-less a real option to me, given that “this document” is the official document prepared and published by the CDC a decade or two ago, and “sensible scientist-policymakers like myself” includes any head of the CDC back when the position was for career-civil-servants rather than presidential appointees, and also includes the task force that the Bush Administration specifically assembled to generate this document, and also included person #2 in California’s public health apparatus (who was passed over for becoming #1 because she was too blond / not racially diverse enough, and who was later cut out of the relevant meetings by her new boss).
Edit: Also, the “guard it from anything that could derail their benevolent behavior” is not necessary, all that’s needed here is to actually give them enough power / rope to hang themselves to let them implement the plan.
The Competent Machinery did exist, it just wasn’t competent enough to overcome the fact that the rest of the government machinery was obstructing it. The plan for social distancing to deal with pandemics was created during the Bush administration, there were people in government trying to implement the plan in … mid-January, if I recall correctly (might have been mid-February). If, for example, the government made an exception to medical privacy laws specifically for reporting the approximate address of positive COVID tests, and the CDC / government had not forbidden independent COVID testing in the early days, we probably would have been able to actually stamp out COVID. (Source: The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (it’s an excellent book, and I highly recommend it))
Does “stamp out COVID” mean success for a few months, or epsilon cases until now? The latter seems super hard, and I think every nation that’s managed it has advantages over the US besides competence (great natural borders or draconian law enforcement).
I was sort of teasing with the “2020” section.
#EXAMPLE Both of the major US tribes had fabricated options in their recommendations.
One tribe said “it’s a choice between [everyone dying] and [locking down for a few weeks while the Competent Government Machinery That Definitely Exists gets a solid response together]!” and the other tribe said “it’s a choice between [the death of the economy and also liberty as we know it] and [a small but inevitable sacrifice in lives that were going to end soon anyway while everything continues largely as normal]!”
And maybe tribe no. 3 saying “it’s a choice between [this completely idiotic politics-driven policies we see] and [obviously much better policy I have described in this document, which could be implemented easily if only the actual government would let sensible scientist-policymakers thinking like myself do the job and guard it from anything that could derail their benevolent behavior]”.
Option number 3 seems like more-or-less a real option to me, given that “this document” is the official document prepared and published by the CDC a decade or two ago, and “sensible scientist-policymakers like myself” includes any head of the CDC back when the position was for career-civil-servants rather than presidential appointees, and also includes the task force that the Bush Administration specifically assembled to generate this document, and also included person #2 in California’s public health apparatus (who was passed over for becoming #1 because she was too blond / not racially diverse enough, and who was later cut out of the relevant meetings by her new boss).
Edit: Also, the “guard it from anything that could derail their benevolent behavior” is not necessary, all that’s needed here is to actually give them enough power / rope to hang themselves to let them implement the plan.
The Competent Machinery did exist, it just wasn’t competent enough to overcome the fact that the rest of the government machinery was obstructing it. The plan for social distancing to deal with pandemics was created during the Bush administration, there were people in government trying to implement the plan in … mid-January, if I recall correctly (might have been mid-February). If, for example, the government made an exception to medical privacy laws specifically for reporting the approximate address of positive COVID tests, and the CDC / government had not forbidden independent COVID testing in the early days, we probably would have been able to actually stamp out COVID. (Source: The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (it’s an excellent book, and I highly recommend it))
Does “stamp out COVID” mean success for a few months, or epsilon cases until now? The latter seems super hard, and I think every nation that’s managed it has advantages over the US besides competence (great natural borders or draconian law enforcement).