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Remember that our generals will always fight the last battle. We will be well prepared for the next pandemic. But the next big thing probably won’t be a pandemi

by jl6 7y ago

Remember that our generals will always fight the last battle. We will be well prepared for the next pandemic. But the next big thing probably won’t be a pandemic.

antibland 7y ago
I would argue that the last battle was what the US saw occur in China and Italy. We knew the virus would reach us within weeks of those countries being hit, knew the risk potential of it, but did little to adequately prepare.
- assblaster 7y ago
  The virus was circulating in the United States undetected, by January. As one of the largest, most heavily traveled countries in the world, there was little hope that they would be able to shut their borders early enough to stave off any infections.
  - zuminator 7y ago
    All that is saying is that shutting borders is not by itself an effective method of limiting the virus. We also needed extensive testing/tracking, early aggressive self-isolation, adequate protective gear and other medical equipment, consistent messaging on how to limit exposure. Along with universal screening of returning travelers. All things that we failed at.
    - assblaster 7y ago
      A high percentage of COVID-19 infected people are asymptomatic. How would temperature and subjective screening prevent these asymptomatic patients from infecting many others?
      - zuminator 7y ago
        In terms of screening people returning from abroad to the US, if we had immediately established a regime of either testing or mandatory self-quarantine, that would have greatly reduced the rate of transmission. Doing widespread spot testing across the country would've identified the communities where the virus was extant. From there we would've known where to focus the brunt of universal testing, tracking and quarantining. Just the fact that we are still fiddling with estimates of what percentage of CV infected people are asymptomatic is a travesty. We should have long ago conducted enough statistical sampling to have a very clear picture what was happening in our communities.
marvin 7y ago
It's not just about fighting the last war, though. It's also about having competent leadership that's able to adapt to a new reality, quickly discover which of their current heuristics are wrong, and then reason from first principles about what needs to be done for a good outcome in the current situation. There has been a spectacular difference in various nations' performance during this crisis. As a Scandinavian I'm a bit skewed in my judgement, but I'm especially in awe at Denmark and Norway's actions, given their lack of recent history with infectious disease: Quickly discover from external evidence what the new reality is, that it's much worse than anything seen during the lifetimes of current leaders, that it requires extreme measures normally only deployed during times of war, and then use science-based leadership and a broad array of expertise to choose what measures to apply. Then apply them with vigor and competently deal with the fallout. This is not trivial - crucially, it requires that the central leadership avoids dogmatic and heuristic reasoning adapted to conditions that no longer apply. Because even if you have such top leadership, there will be leaders on the second tier of this hierarchy that are not used to reasoning on a war footing. They will act or give advice that's normally sound, but counterproductive in the new and extreme reality. Top leadership needs to catch onto this fast, and strike down or disregard advice that's not applicable to the crisis at hand. You can see these phenomena in a plethora of fields. Scientists grasping for N=100,000 double-blind randomized peer-reviewed studies for a novel phenomenon, rather than make the best educated guess from reasoning and available evidence. National leadership trying to solve a health-induced economic crisis by printing money and nothing else. Politicians infighting and posturing by old routine, as if the enemy army isn't already banging down the gates. Reasoning by analogy, let's do the same as we do in a bad flu season. Blame the other party, has always worked before. Or a subtle insidious variant that's currently responsible for Sweden's problems: let the experts handle it, and dictate public policy without regard for what happens outside of their field of expertise. Turns out an expert in a narrow field with an IQ of 120 and a track record of success is a very dangerous leader. They often aren't aware of their blind spots.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I think competent leadership is one of those unsolved problems, that has the added malus of being, insofar as we have some ideas, a tough pill to swallow for any given current leadership. Granted, most problems are manageable with excellent leadership, but the whole point about a good system is it works fine with mediocre leaders - and there's a corollary - if your organization requires talented leadership to function, it's a bad organization.
Nightshaxx 7y ago
Not arguing that we shouldn't have anticipated this more, but to be fair the "next big things" that we were prepared for, you might not have noticed. For instance I'm sure there are tons of serious terrorist threats that the government has prevented, but when one acctually happens, everyone complains how the government doesn't know what to do about terrorists. I'm definitely not saying they shouldnt have prevented it....just be aware of the bias.
specialist 7y ago
But we were prepared for this pandemic. Then all those programs were eliminated. That "deescalation" is separate from all the missteps which have happened since.

by jl6 7y ago

Remember that our generals will always fight the last battle. We will be well prepared for the next pandemic. But the next big thing probably won’t be a pandemic.

antibland 7y ago

I would argue that the last battle was what the US saw occur in China and Italy. We knew the virus would reach us within weeks of those countries being hit, knew the risk potential of it, but did little to adequately prepare.

assblaster 7y ago
The virus was circulating in the United States undetected, by January. As one of the largest, most heavily traveled countries in the world, there was little hope that they would be able to shut their borders early enough to stave off any infections.
- zuminator 7y ago
  All that is saying is that shutting borders is not by itself an effective method of limiting the virus. We also needed extensive testing/tracking, early aggressive self-isolation, adequate protective gear and other medical equipment, consistent messaging on how to limit exposure. Along with universal screening of returning travelers. All things that we failed at.
  - assblaster 7y ago
    A high percentage of COVID-19 infected people are asymptomatic. How would temperature and subjective screening prevent these asymptomatic patients from infecting many others?
    - zuminator 7y ago
      In terms of screening people returning from abroad to the US, if we had immediately established a regime of either testing or mandatory self-quarantine, that would have greatly reduced the rate of transmission. Doing widespread spot testing across the country would've identified the communities where the virus was extant. From there we would've known where to focus the brunt of universal testing, tracking and quarantining. Just the fact that we are still fiddling with estimates of what percentage of CV infected people are asymptomatic is a travesty. We should have long ago conducted enough statistical sampling to have a very clear picture what was happening in our communities.

marvin 7y ago

It's not just about fighting the last war, though. It's also about having competent leadership that's able to adapt to a new reality, quickly discover which of their current heuristics are wrong, and then reason from first principles about what needs to be done for a good outcome in the current situation. There has been a spectacular difference in various nations' performance during this crisis. As a Scandinavian I'm a bit skewed in my judgement, but I'm especially in awe at Denmark and Norway's actions, given their lack of recent history with infectious disease: Quickly discover from external evidence what the new reality is, that it's much worse than anything seen during the lifetimes of current leaders, that it requires extreme measures normally only deployed during times of war, and then use science-based leadership and a broad array of expertise to choose what measures to apply. Then apply them with vigor and competently deal with the fallout. This is not trivial - crucially, it requires that the central leadership avoids dogmatic and heuristic reasoning adapted to conditions that no longer apply. Because even if you have such top leadership, there will be leaders on the second tier of this hierarchy that are not used to reasoning on a war footing. They will act or give advice that's normally sound, but counterproductive in the new and extreme reality. Top leadership needs to catch onto this fast, and strike down or disregard advice that's not applicable to the crisis at hand. You can see these phenomena in a plethora of fields. Scientists grasping for N=100,000 double-blind randomized peer-reviewed studies for a novel phenomenon, rather than make the best educated guess from reasoning and available evidence. National leadership trying to solve a health-induced economic crisis by printing money and nothing else. Politicians infighting and posturing by old routine, as if the enemy army isn't already banging down the gates. Reasoning by analogy, let's do the same as we do in a bad flu season. Blame the other party, has always worked before. Or a subtle insidious variant that's currently responsible for Sweden's problems: let the experts handle it, and dictate public policy without regard for what happens outside of their field of expertise. Turns out an expert in a narrow field with an IQ of 120 and a track record of success is a very dangerous leader. They often aren't aware of their blind spots.

pasabagi 7y ago
I think competent leadership is one of those unsolved problems, that has the added malus of being, insofar as we have some ideas, a tough pill to swallow for any given current leadership. Granted, most problems are manageable with excellent leadership, but the whole point about a good system is it works fine with mediocre leaders - and there's a corollary - if your organization requires talented leadership to function, it's a bad organization.

Nightshaxx 7y ago

Not arguing that we shouldn't have anticipated this more, but to be fair the "next big things" that we were prepared for, you might not have noticed. For instance I'm sure there are tons of serious terrorist threats that the government has prevented, but when one acctually happens, everyone complains how the government doesn't know what to do about terrorists. I'm definitely not saying they shouldnt have prevented it....just be aware of the bias.

specialist 7y ago

But we were prepared for this pandemic. Then all those programs were eliminated. That "deescalation" is separate from all the missteps which have happened since.