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We could argue about code smells all day, but ignoring that, I think there's only one essential point made in the post. It claims that without a lockdown, thing

by knzhou 6y ago

We could argue about code smells all day, but ignoring that, I think there's only one essential point made in the post. It claims that without a lockdown, things would be just fine, because people would automatically isolate themselves on their own. And therefore the model is useless. This is a completely unfair criticism. When the relevant decisions were being made two months ago, a huge number of influential people in the UK were seriously proposing to do nothing to get herd immunity. This model, which intentionally depicts what would happen if people indeed did nothing, was a big part of why people changed their minds. You can't say the model is wrong because people would take COVID seriously anyway, when the model is half the reason people take it seriously in the first place. We're somehow forgetting history that's only months old now.

Traster 6y ago
According to the Atlantic > Johnson instead offered a suite of soft advice—people with symptoms should stay home; no school trips abroad; people over 70 should avoid cruises. So to be clear, even the most "do nothing" approach was not "do nothing", and at that time, people were alread voluntarily starting to socially distance.
- knzhou 6y ago
  These options are so soft that they really are equivalent to doing nothing. Sick people have always been told to stay home; trips abroad and on ships might cause visible clusters early on, but they're a drop in the bucket later when the disease is already at home. The real issue is that a strong response causes people to take things seriously, and a weak response causes them to not take it seriously. In other words, just like the model, we have a situation where predicted results inform the actions taken, which affect popular opinion, which in turn change the predicted results. Yes, the optimal outcome is to somehow have the government do nothing, thus restricting nobody's freedoms, but simultaneously have society take it so seriously that they eradicate the disease themselves in two weeks. But that is not a genuine policy option.
  - Traster 6y ago
    You say that, but your intuition about those measures isn't good enough, which is why we needed a reliable model to tell us whether those measures were going to be effective, that's the entire point of the research. If our starting point is "Oh well obviously we need to do lock down" then why are we wasting money on modelling it? And since we haven't modelled the system without public policy intervention, none of the results mean anything.

by knzhou 6y ago

Traster 6y ago

According to the Atlantic > Johnson instead offered a suite of soft advice—people with symptoms should stay home; no school trips abroad; people over 70 should avoid cruises. So to be clear, even the most "do nothing" approach was not "do nothing", and at that time, people were alread voluntarily starting to socially distance.

knzhou 6y ago
These options are so soft that they really are equivalent to doing nothing. Sick people have always been told to stay home; trips abroad and on ships might cause visible clusters early on, but they're a drop in the bucket later when the disease is already at home. The real issue is that a strong response causes people to take things seriously, and a weak response causes them to not take it seriously. In other words, just like the model, we have a situation where predicted results inform the actions taken, which affect popular opinion, which in turn change the predicted results. Yes, the optimal outcome is to somehow have the government do nothing, thus restricting nobody's freedoms, but simultaneously have society take it so seriously that they eradicate the disease themselves in two weeks. But that is not a genuine policy option.
- Traster 6y ago
  You say that, but your intuition about those measures isn't good enough, which is why we needed a reliable model to tell us whether those measures were going to be effective, that's the entire point of the research. If our starting point is "Oh well obviously we need to do lock down" then why are we wasting money on modelling it? And since we haven't modelled the system without public policy intervention, none of the results mean anything.