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Thanks for posting. It's a terrible shame society has torn itself apart before we could learn the (to some) obvious lesson, but at least maybe this will inform

by rob_c 5y ago

Thanks for posting. It's a terrible shame society has torn itself apart before we could learn the (to some) obvious lesson, but at least maybe this will inform policy in the future... That or governments are now more terrified of people losing their minds and so feel they should be even more controlling in their fear response as a knee jerk reaction.... Either way, in the UK we failed to save about 67% of those who could have been saved through bad practice and even worse policy...

jerf 5y ago
There's two aspects to this, I think. One is true protectionism. My objection to this is that if we perhaps had superhumans guiding us mere humans, they might be capable of modulating our information flow to protect us, but mere humans lack this power. Indeed, let's be honest, being a politician is if anything a counter-indicator in being the sort of person capable of dealing with the real issues that arise in a crisis. The truth is government isn't really capable of modulating information flow to a society for their own good or protection. I think a lot of people implicitly and in an unexamined way tend to assume that "the government" is populated by some sort of superhumans, but they're just people. Relative to the enormous problems they face, even their training or experience they may have doesn't necessarily put them that far ahead of normal people, who aren't all unskilled yokels out in the fields trying to figure out how to keep their sheep in the pen or something. The other aspect is the abuse of information flow to consolidate, create, or simply exercise power, since "information is power" is not really a metaphor. It goes beyond merely being incapable to outright reprehensible that our "trusted" leaders would use the opportunity of having this sort of information in a life-and-death situation for such crass purposes, and there ought to be consequences for them, personally. Either way, we have once again demonstrated that there really isn't a compelling reason to be keeping information from people.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Broadly after seeing some of the material coming out of the UK "think tanks" in early 2020 this was really "govt, starched collar, upper class" thinking that the proles will start eating themselves if we even mention that there's a chance they could die. I think projected compliance with a lockdown in the UK was initially estimated and serious attempts were made to model it at 40% compliance. When govt got near 95%+ compliance during the first lock down other idiots took over behind the scenes, patted themselves on the back and decided why not go for "zero-covid" in 2020... Edit: (I'm not joking there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown", aka we expect that as policy to not be able to function) AKA the first lockdown being a success in the UK was a great statement of how the people behave that had damming effect on the direction of health policy. Heard immunity would have been reached much quicker and the 2020 winter less bad had more healthy people been exposed in the start and summer of 2020. The fact that lockdown and rules were followed so well actually made the winter worse than the initial (sensible) projections predicted.
  - mulvya 5y ago
    > there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown" Fauci said that in Feb 2020. -------- Q. How confident are you that the Chinese are doing what needs to be done? A. They're doing things that have completely broken the paradigm of how you respond. They have been, in a draconian way, shutting down everything. They have locked down 50 million people, including the entire 11 million-person city of Wuhan. They will not allow anyone into Beijing unless they have a 14-day quarantine. They're essentially locking people who test positive in their houses. I mean, they're doing things that are almost unheard of in the annals of public health. Q. Will it work? A. As unusual and extreme as it is, it might actually, ultimately, have an effect. There's this report that the number of new cases for the last couple of days in China has gone down. I don't put much strength in that unless I see it really start to come down and down and down. A few days of going down doesn't mean anything to me. But if it continues to go down, that might be a signal that they're having an effect of what otherwise would be extreme means. Q. That would never happen here, would it? Locking down 50 million people? A. No, not a chance. It would never happen. -------- https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-coronavirus-what-dont-we-know-dr-anthony-fauci-q-a-opinion/4790996002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-corona...
    - JamisonM 5y ago
      I mean, there was never an intervention in the USA comparable to the lockdown in China - right? Is there an instance where 50 million Americans couldn't travel to a neighbouring city without suffering criminal penalties?
    - rob_c 5y ago
      Trust me. Not just Faucci and not just the UK. As for dates I think the UK one was in Jan or Feb when we refused to attend an EU meeting on the situation as it was developing in Italy
  - notahacker 5y ago
    We still haven't reached herd immunity in the UK, and we have 49 of 67 million people vaccinated (plus some of the rest previously infected). The idea we'd have had fewer COVID casualties by allowing it to spread more easily before the winter is not one supported by evidence.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  > My objection to this is that if we perhaps had superhumans guiding us mere humans, they might be capable of modulating our information flow to protect us, but mere humans lack this power. It almost sounds like Godel's incompleteness theorem somehow. We're not capable of fixing the system because we are the system.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
> governments are now more terrified of people losing their minds The empirical evidence from the covid experience seems to justify their fears that a segment of the population will lose their minds.

by rob_c 5y ago

jerf 5y ago

There's two aspects to this, I think. One is true protectionism. My objection to this is that if we perhaps had superhumans guiding us mere humans, they might be capable of modulating our information flow to protect us, but mere humans lack this power. Indeed, let's be honest, being a politician is if anything a counter-indicator in being the sort of person capable of dealing with the real issues that arise in a crisis. The truth is government isn't really capable of modulating information flow to a society for their own good or protection. I think a lot of people implicitly and in an unexamined way tend to assume that "the government" is populated by some sort of superhumans, but they're just people. Relative to the enormous problems they face, even their training or experience they may have doesn't necessarily put them that far ahead of normal people, who aren't all unskilled yokels out in the fields trying to figure out how to keep their sheep in the pen or something. The other aspect is the abuse of information flow to consolidate, create, or simply exercise power, since "information is power" is not really a metaphor. It goes beyond merely being incapable to outright reprehensible that our "trusted" leaders would use the opportunity of having this sort of information in a life-and-death situation for such crass purposes, and there ought to be consequences for them, personally. Either way, we have once again demonstrated that there really isn't a compelling reason to be keeping information from people.

rob_c 5y ago
Broadly after seeing some of the material coming out of the UK "think tanks" in early 2020 this was really "govt, starched collar, upper class" thinking that the proles will start eating themselves if we even mention that there's a chance they could die. I think projected compliance with a lockdown in the UK was initially estimated and serious attempts were made to model it at 40% compliance. When govt got near 95%+ compliance during the first lock down other idiots took over behind the scenes, patted themselves on the back and decided why not go for "zero-covid" in 2020... Edit: (I'm not joking there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown", aka we expect that as policy to not be able to function) AKA the first lockdown being a success in the UK was a great statement of how the people behave that had damming effect on the direction of health policy. Heard immunity would have been reached much quicker and the 2020 winter less bad had more healthy people been exposed in the start and summer of 2020. The fact that lockdown and rules were followed so well actually made the winter worse than the initial (sensible) projections predicted.
- mulvya 5y ago
  > there is a statement on record from politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown" Fauci said that in Feb 2020. -------- Q. How confident are you that the Chinese are doing what needs to be done? A. They're doing things that have completely broken the paradigm of how you respond. They have been, in a draconian way, shutting down everything. They have locked down 50 million people, including the entire 11 million-person city of Wuhan. They will not allow anyone into Beijing unless they have a 14-day quarantine. They're essentially locking people who test positive in their houses. I mean, they're doing things that are almost unheard of in the annals of public health. Q. Will it work? A. As unusual and extreme as it is, it might actually, ultimately, have an effect. There's this report that the number of new cases for the last couple of days in China has gone down. I don't put much strength in that unless I see it really start to come down and down and down. A few days of going down doesn't mean anything to me. But if it continues to go down, that might be a signal that they're having an effect of what otherwise would be extreme means. Q. That would never happen here, would it? Locking down 50 million people? A. No, not a chance. It would never happen. -------- https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-coronavirus-what-dont-we-know-dr-anthony-fauci-q-a-opinion/4790996002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-corona...
  - JamisonM 5y ago
    I mean, there was never an intervention in the USA comparable to the lockdown in China - right? Is there an instance where 50 million Americans couldn't travel to a neighbouring city without suffering criminal penalties?
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Trust me. Not just Faucci and not just the UK. As for dates I think the UK one was in Jan or Feb when we refused to attend an EU meeting on the situation as it was developing in Italy
- notahacker 5y ago
  We still haven't reached herd immunity in the UK, and we have 49 of 67 million people vaccinated (plus some of the rest previously infected). The idea we'd have had fewer COVID casualties by allowing it to spread more easily before the winter is not one supported by evidence.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
> My objection to this is that if we perhaps had superhumans guiding us mere humans, they might be capable of modulating our information flow to protect us, but mere humans lack this power. It almost sounds like Godel's incompleteness theorem somehow. We're not capable of fixing the system because we are the system.

UncleOxidant 5y ago

> governments are now more terrified of people losing their minds The empirical evidence from the covid experience seems to justify their fears that a segment of the population will lose their minds.