4 ms·

>When the firefighters rush in, they will not wait for the fire scientist to first finish all the measurements That's because the "science" on firefighting has

>When the firefighters rush in, they will not wait for the fire scientist to first finish all the measurements That's because the "science" on firefighting has already been settled. They know exactly what will happen when you do X to a fire and they know how to stop it fast and efficiently. They know what the consequences of spraying water on a fire are and when you won't be able to put one out etc. It's quite different to run in and say we need to mask, lockdown, close businesses/schools, produce a vaccine and distribute it immediately. Ok why? Are you sure this will save lives? They had no idea, it was just a knee jerk reaction. You can partially justify these things when they didn't know how bad COVID was going to be but then they continued with them for 2 years with very little evidence to back up their decisions. At some point you have to back off and say "hey we don't have a damn clue what the best course of action is". If your fix is worse than the problem you might need to re-evaluate and wait for the actual science on it. I think people make the assumption that you HAVE to do something immediately when bad things happen, sometimes doing nothing and observing is the better option. There are multiple examples of the choice to do something being worse than doing nothing during this pandemic (e.g. governor sends infected persons into nursing homes) and as time goes on I think we're going to see more fallout from some of these choices.

shadowgovt 5y ago
> Ok why? Are you sure this will save lives? Yes, the CDC models out pandemic responses in advance between panedmics. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm One obvious weakness of the options they have to do this is they're preparing for diseases we've seen, not novel diseases we haven't seen yet. But in the case of COVID-19, it's an airborne pathogen so the flu containment protocol was the best tool in the toolbox. Masks, hand-washing, and lockdowns didn't come out of a vacuum; they're part of the standard process (which most people perhaps didn't know because unlike, say, fire-fighting, we don't have regular TV shows about pandemics).
bernulli 5y ago
There are very few things settled in the science of fire, but that's beside the point. I'd say the science is settled on what the most effective thing was to eliminate COVID: complete and total shut down, as soon as possible: New Zealand has the lowest casualties of any OECD country and held sporting events in full stadiums when the rest of the world was hoarding toilet paper.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  Unfortunately at a global level it's not possible or practical for every country to have total and complete shut down. I'm thinking of the majority of the world's population who live in developing countries. Thus as a strategy it's not really a sustainable one at all, but can work at a small level for a short time.
  - bernulli 5y ago
    Yet another reason not to conflate the science of a pandemic with actually fighting it!
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  So you think the US should have completely shut down their borders? I'm gonna guess that would have been immediately labeled as racist if Trump even suggested that. Oh... wait he did and immediately got labeled racist. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-borders_n_5e6a530ec5b6dda30fc4be6e https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-borders_n_5... "Trump clearly sees the novel coronavirus as just another foreign invader to keep out — a viewpoint reflected both in his policy proposals and the way he and his administration talk about the virus. This approach is in line with his overarching political strategy of exploiting Americans’ fears to justify racist, nativist policies."
jjoonathan 5y ago
No, firefighting is not trivial from a decision making perspective. Deluges cause severe water damage, even in the best circumstances where they ultimately save the day. Firebreaks have a moderate failure rate and can even help propagate fire if the wind is wrong. Backfires literally fight fire with fire. They all involve heavy tradeoffs and severe uncertainty, but as a culture we accept that these are necessary aspects of firefighting, and that even with such inherent uncertainty we want timely action rather than "wait forever and see." It's actually a good analogy, it just points to exactly the opposite conclusion from the one you drew.
watwut 5y ago
> That's because the "science" on firefighting has already been settled. They know exactly what will happen when you do X to a fire and they know how to stop it fast and efficiently. That is not quite true. Where science is not available firefighters go by experience and best guesses. The same goes for cops and even doctors. Not everything we do has good science behind it. Instead, science is coming pretty often much later, simply because actual science takes a lot of time.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  Then why am I told to "trust the science" for every lock-down measure put in place? You're being pedantic. I was just using a metaphor to explain we have a lot more data for one thing and it's pretty clear what path needs to be taken in a fire. Yeah it's not 100% but it's much further along than COVID "science".
  - watwut 5y ago
    The problem with that metaphor was that real life firefighters don't work like that. And it breaks that metaphors.
stonemetal12 5y ago
>That's because the "science" on firefighting has already been settled. For this specific fire though? /s COVID isn't the first Virus in the world. There is a good quantity of science on combatting viruses. Sure, we need to figure out where COVID falls in our overall knowledge of viruses but claiming "They had no idea, it was just a knee jerk reaction." is far from the actual situation.

shadowgovt 5y ago

> Ok why? Are you sure this will save lives? Yes, the CDC models out pandemic responses in advance between panedmics. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm One obvious weakness of the options they have to do this is they're preparing for diseases we've seen, not novel diseases we haven't seen yet. But in the case of COVID-19, it's an airborne pathogen so the flu containment protocol was the best tool in the toolbox. Masks, hand-washing, and lockdowns didn't come out of a vacuum; they're part of the standard process (which most people perhaps didn't know because unlike, say, fire-fighting, we don't have regular TV shows about pandemics).

bernulli 5y ago

There are very few things settled in the science of fire, but that's beside the point. I'd say the science is settled on what the most effective thing was to eliminate COVID: complete and total shut down, as soon as possible: New Zealand has the lowest casualties of any OECD country and held sporting events in full stadiums when the rest of the world was hoarding toilet paper.

thinkingemote 5y ago
Unfortunately at a global level it's not possible or practical for every country to have total and complete shut down. I'm thinking of the majority of the world's population who live in developing countries. Thus as a strategy it's not really a sustainable one at all, but can work at a small level for a short time.
- bernulli 5y ago
  Yet another reason not to conflate the science of a pandemic with actually fighting it!
CountDrewku 5y ago
So you think the US should have completely shut down their borders? I'm gonna guess that would have been immediately labeled as racist if Trump even suggested that. Oh... wait he did and immediately got labeled racist. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-borders_n_5e6a530ec5b6dda30fc4be6e https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-borders_n_5... "Trump clearly sees the novel coronavirus as just another foreign invader to keep out — a viewpoint reflected both in his policy proposals and the way he and his administration talk about the virus. This approach is in line with his overarching political strategy of exploiting Americans’ fears to justify racist, nativist policies."

jjoonathan 5y ago

No, firefighting is not trivial from a decision making perspective. Deluges cause severe water damage, even in the best circumstances where they ultimately save the day. Firebreaks have a moderate failure rate and can even help propagate fire if the wind is wrong. Backfires literally fight fire with fire. They all involve heavy tradeoffs and severe uncertainty, but as a culture we accept that these are necessary aspects of firefighting, and that even with such inherent uncertainty we want timely action rather than "wait forever and see." It's actually a good analogy, it just points to exactly the opposite conclusion from the one you drew.

watwut 5y ago

> That's because the "science" on firefighting has already been settled. They know exactly what will happen when you do X to a fire and they know how to stop it fast and efficiently. That is not quite true. Where science is not available firefighters go by experience and best guesses. The same goes for cops and even doctors. Not everything we do has good science behind it. Instead, science is coming pretty often much later, simply because actual science takes a lot of time.

CountDrewku 5y ago
Then why am I told to "trust the science" for every lock-down measure put in place? You're being pedantic. I was just using a metaphor to explain we have a lot more data for one thing and it's pretty clear what path needs to be taken in a fire. Yeah it's not 100% but it's much further along than COVID "science".
- watwut 5y ago
  The problem with that metaphor was that real life firefighters don't work like that. And it breaks that metaphors.

stonemetal12 5y ago

>That's because the "science" on firefighting has already been settled. For this specific fire though? /s COVID isn't the first Virus in the world. There is a good quantity of science on combatting viruses. Sure, we need to figure out where COVID falls in our overall knowledge of viruses but claiming "They had no idea, it was just a knee jerk reaction." is far from the actual situation.