4 ms·

> Shutting down the economy has externalities; those externatlities can be life or death as well. If the strategy of those implementing the "shelter in place" i

by calf 7y ago

> Shutting down the economy has externalities; those externatlities can be life or death as well. If the strategy of those implementing the "shelter in place" is one of just waiting it out: then I'm going to be off the wagon fairly quickly. I think the problem with this very common attitude is the demand for immediate answers, or else. It's an ultimatum. We don't expect programmers and engineers to come up with complete, ready-to-commit solutions to a complex problem immediately. Thinking like a consumer doesn't help. An alternative is to demand transparency and to be engaged in the process of decision making. But that requires an attitude/intellectual realignment.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
I don't think a complete solution is expected. An incomplete but scaffolded solution would be very well received. A clear statement that we expect infections to level off by date X and we can relax restrictions after condition Y would be very nice - especially since people could start making Y happen as fast as possible. What's concerning about the current messaging is that it's not clear whether it's incorporated the underlying limits to how long people will tolerate a lockdown. An ultimatum is the right framing; decisionmakers need to know, and we need to know they know, that "then we'll lock down for 6 months" is not part of the solution space.
- calf 7y ago
  Ultimatums are bad faith and basically anti-liberal so I don't care for that sort of rhetoric, and I think more people should try that as a baseline. When the ultimatums themselves do not account for the well-being of the elderly and vulnerable, we should not be giving that rhetoric credit. There's an ideological and intellectual distinction to be made between people's behaviors; those who want to discuss the "COVID tradeoff problem", and those who simplistically repeat talking points "but the economy will cause deaths too" (in reactance to the other narrative, the prediction of collapse of healthcare systems).
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Sure, I’m happy to discuss taboo tradeoffs with people who are willing. Even a 3 month lockdown is clearly not worth the lives it would save. If you could rescue some Kansas man you don’t know from cancer, by cutting off friends and family and career for 3 months, you wouldn’t do it. And there’s orders of magnitude less than 1 life per person at stake here. Most people aren’t willing to explicitly discuss how many lives it’s worth to be allowed to hug your mother, so for general consumption it must be framed in absolutes. There’s a number of weeks past which the cost is unacceptable and I’m joining the mob at City Hall, and that number is not in the double digits.

by calf 7y ago

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

I don't think a complete solution is expected. An incomplete but scaffolded solution would be very well received. A clear statement that we expect infections to level off by date X and we can relax restrictions after condition Y would be very nice - especially since people could start making Y happen as fast as possible. What's concerning about the current messaging is that it's not clear whether it's incorporated the underlying limits to how long people will tolerate a lockdown. An ultimatum is the right framing; decisionmakers need to know, and we need to know they know, that "then we'll lock down for 6 months" is not part of the solution space.

calf 7y ago
Ultimatums are bad faith and basically anti-liberal so I don't care for that sort of rhetoric, and I think more people should try that as a baseline. When the ultimatums themselves do not account for the well-being of the elderly and vulnerable, we should not be giving that rhetoric credit. There's an ideological and intellectual distinction to be made between people's behaviors; those who want to discuss the "COVID tradeoff problem", and those who simplistically repeat talking points "but the economy will cause deaths too" (in reactance to the other narrative, the prediction of collapse of healthcare systems).
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Sure, I’m happy to discuss taboo tradeoffs with people who are willing. Even a 3 month lockdown is clearly not worth the lives it would save. If you could rescue some Kansas man you don’t know from cancer, by cutting off friends and family and career for 3 months, you wouldn’t do it. And there’s orders of magnitude less than 1 life per person at stake here. Most people aren’t willing to explicitly discuss how many lives it’s worth to be allowed to hug your mother, so for general consumption it must be framed in absolutes. There’s a number of weeks past which the cost is unacceptable and I’m joining the mob at City Hall, and that number is not in the double digits.