6 ms·

I wonder if these simulations do more harm. Like it gives people a false sense of security and locks them into a strategy. I think the best illustration for thi

I wonder if these simulations do more harm. Like it gives people a false sense of security and locks them into a strategy. I think the best illustration for this is covid. Our leaders and experts threw away the pandemic playbook and replaced it with this new strategy of using novel precision vaccine technology and having a near singular focus on getting people vaccinated. As time goes on, it seems more and more like a failure. But we are basically stuck. We are not responding to ANY signals that this is a bad strategy. We need strategy that has the ability to be flexible. It needs to be based on outcome. These simulations incorrectly teach people that the strategy is the goal, instead of aiming towards an outcome. For example, reducing hospitalization and deaths isn't the goal with current covid policy. The goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible.

cinntaile 5y ago
What is the pandemic playbook and how does the current response differ? People running these simulations are obviously focused on outcomes, that's why you run these simulations in the first place. Simulations allow you to find flaws in your preparations, but it doesn't make your preparations flawless. You try to minimize your outcome downside risk .
- crisdux 5y ago
  Folks need to understand that our current strategy is quite revolutionary. Basically everything goes against previous guidance. We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people, lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports. Vaccinate everyone with little regard for safety or necessity. Ignore natural immunity. Ignore outpatient treatment. Impose a systematic campaign of censorship, deception and propaganda. Noble lies and dishonesty are accepted. Informed consent is thrown away. Nearly every major tenant of our current strategy is anti science and is resulting in more suffering. It is not obvious that these people who run these simulations are focused on positive outcomes on behalf of the population.
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    Well said! There has been near zero attention by the main agencies in power on therapeutics. E.g. even if ivermectin doesn't work, why can't we focus more on finding what does? It's only been vaccine, vaccine and more vaccine. Not even a mention for lifestyle or diet or supplements
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      There is focus on therapeutics. Although it's better to prevent than to treat, so a bigger focus on vaccines is expected.
      - chana_masala 5y ago
        These vaccines don't prevent and barely treat
        cinntaile 5y ago
        It's quite effective at preventing serious illness and death, which is the whole point of the vaccines. It's even better if you don't get sick at all, but unfortunately not everyone has that much luck by being vaccinated.
        chana_masala 5y ago
        > which is the whole point of the vaccines Historically the point of vaccines have been to prevent transmission. The covid vaccine is distinct on this.
        cinntaile 5y ago
        The covid vaccine is not distinct on this. HPV vaccine, diphteria vaccine, tetanus vaccine... The point has mostly been to prevent (serious) illness. If you can prevent that, then you can likely limit or eliminate the spread.
feldrim 5y ago
The thing is many countries have their disaster management strategies for pandemics. But when it comes action, the strategiea fail. There are many reasons for this. First of all, previous pandemics like bird flu had fast infection but it was known to the experts and easier than COVID-19 to handle. But COVID was unknown and it took more time to respond properly and actually there's still more unknown things that the responses cannot be validated. It's hard to respond unknown unknowns.[1] Second, the strategies are great on paper but when it comes to implementing them, it is all about the politics. The politics of funding the research institutes and academic institutions, the structure of the nation's health care system, economic situation and use of state budget to support people in the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, the policies to allow human movement such as lock downs and restrictions... When it comes to actions, it's just the decision of the politicians. Third, the strategies are created with stakeholders based on previous experience. And when they exercised, they are based on either previously occurred issues or predictions of the experts/participants of the strategy. You cannot be prepared for everything so you create many different feasible scenarios and exercise them. And they are limited by the capability of the participants. Finally, strategies are already flexible because they are not binding for the states. A government can change the strategy on the go. A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
- didericis 5y ago
  > A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda. This is the crux of the current failures. Many politicians seem to be making decisions based on the consensus of the loudest in their constituencies and select experts who mirror them rather than people who have studied epidemiology. The Great Barrington Declaration advocated more traditional responses for prioritizing the protection of those most at risk prior to the vaccines. The public discussion around this was almost entirely based on optics, and the term "herd immunity" was demonized and considered too non compassionate. It was treated like a political language exercise rather than a public safety issue. Now that term has quietly reentered discourse without much acknowledgment of what was stated by those epidemiologists because reality isn't permitting any other end state. Yet many of the original policies which the declaration advises against are still being repeated and still failing, I think in large part to save face. Many people recognized the problems with the current policies and advocated better ones very quickly. The amount of unknowns were mostly only an issue for the first few months. Once the demographic data came in a sensible response should have been (and was to many) fairly obvious. But sensible policy acknowledges a certain unavoidable risk, and the optics of that isn't allowable in our current political climate, so we advocate delusional fantasies instead. Those trained in fields like epidemiology and pandemic response who know what they're doing and see the failures should continue to refuse to sign their name to bad policy and publicize their issues with it. That's what the Great Barrington Declaration was and what some who have resigned from certain positions at the CDC have done. The main justification for bad policy has been "the support of experts". Public health experts are having their field tarnished dramatically by being leaned upon in name by people that are ignoring their actual advice. They should stop allowing it. They have the most power to hold irresponsible politicians accountable, and should exercise it. The amount of good disaster management strategy that was thrown out because it had the potential to look bad and was more difficult to implement than ineffective measures (like designating certain areas safe spots for at risk people and providing spaces for them to shelter during spikes) should be more publicized.
jorgesborges 5y ago
The pandemic playbook was designed to manage and mitigate “communication dilemmas”, not execute a strategic health response — which isn’t necessarily incompetent. It’s prescient enough to recognize that our greatest danger isn’t a virus but paralysis and inertia, a struggle to digest information and propaganda, an inability to understand or engage with one another, distrust and inefficacy crippling our institutions, waning authority of media and journalism, etc. For anyone who hasn’t read through John Hopkins simulated SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 it’s pretty interesting [0]. They discuss controversies concerning medical treatments, anti-vaxxers, and strategies to engage in propaganda wars on social media. Disclaimer: not wearing a tinfoil hat, no the report isn’t part of a conspiracy to railroad the population into vaccines, but it does reveal a certain ineptitude and bad faith. [0] https://jhsphcenterforhealthsecurity.s3.amazonaws.com/spars-pandemic-scenario.pdf https://jhsphcenterforhealthsecurity.s3.amazonaws.com/spars-...

cinntaile 5y ago

What is the pandemic playbook and how does the current response differ? People running these simulations are obviously focused on outcomes, that's why you run these simulations in the first place. Simulations allow you to find flaws in your preparations, but it doesn't make your preparations flawless. You try to minimize your outcome downside risk .

crisdux 5y ago
Folks need to understand that our current strategy is quite revolutionary. Basically everything goes against previous guidance. We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people, lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports. Vaccinate everyone with little regard for safety or necessity. Ignore natural immunity. Ignore outpatient treatment. Impose a systematic campaign of censorship, deception and propaganda. Noble lies and dishonesty are accepted. Informed consent is thrown away. Nearly every major tenant of our current strategy is anti science and is resulting in more suffering. It is not obvious that these people who run these simulations are focused on positive outcomes on behalf of the population.
- chana_masala 5y ago
  Well said! There has been near zero attention by the main agencies in power on therapeutics. E.g. even if ivermectin doesn't work, why can't we focus more on finding what does? It's only been vaccine, vaccine and more vaccine. Not even a mention for lifestyle or diet or supplements
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    There is focus on therapeutics. Although it's better to prevent than to treat, so a bigger focus on vaccines is expected.
    - chana_masala 5y ago
      These vaccines don't prevent and barely treat
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        It's quite effective at preventing serious illness and death, which is the whole point of the vaccines. It's even better if you don't get sick at all, but unfortunately not everyone has that much luck by being vaccinated.
        chana_masala 5y ago
        > which is the whole point of the vaccines Historically the point of vaccines have been to prevent transmission. The covid vaccine is distinct on this.
        cinntaile 5y ago
        The covid vaccine is not distinct on this. HPV vaccine, diphteria vaccine, tetanus vaccine... The point has mostly been to prevent (serious) illness. If you can prevent that, then you can likely limit or eliminate the spread.

feldrim 5y ago

The thing is many countries have their disaster management strategies for pandemics. But when it comes action, the strategiea fail. There are many reasons for this. First of all, previous pandemics like bird flu had fast infection but it was known to the experts and easier than COVID-19 to handle. But COVID was unknown and it took more time to respond properly and actually there's still more unknown things that the responses cannot be validated. It's hard to respond unknown unknowns.[1] Second, the strategies are great on paper but when it comes to implementing them, it is all about the politics. The politics of funding the research institutes and academic institutions, the structure of the nation's health care system, economic situation and use of state budget to support people in the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, the policies to allow human movement such as lock downs and restrictions... When it comes to actions, it's just the decision of the politicians. Third, the strategies are created with stakeholders based on previous experience. And when they exercised, they are based on either previously occurred issues or predictions of the experts/participants of the strategy. You cannot be prepared for everything so you create many different feasible scenarios and exercise them. And they are limited by the capability of the participants. Finally, strategies are already flexible because they are not binding for the states. A government can change the strategy on the go. A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns

didericis 5y ago
> A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda. This is the crux of the current failures. Many politicians seem to be making decisions based on the consensus of the loudest in their constituencies and select experts who mirror them rather than people who have studied epidemiology. The Great Barrington Declaration advocated more traditional responses for prioritizing the protection of those most at risk prior to the vaccines. The public discussion around this was almost entirely based on optics, and the term "herd immunity" was demonized and considered too non compassionate. It was treated like a political language exercise rather than a public safety issue. Now that term has quietly reentered discourse without much acknowledgment of what was stated by those epidemiologists because reality isn't permitting any other end state. Yet many of the original policies which the declaration advises against are still being repeated and still failing, I think in large part to save face. Many people recognized the problems with the current policies and advocated better ones very quickly. The amount of unknowns were mostly only an issue for the first few months. Once the demographic data came in a sensible response should have been (and was to many) fairly obvious. But sensible policy acknowledges a certain unavoidable risk, and the optics of that isn't allowable in our current political climate, so we advocate delusional fantasies instead. Those trained in fields like epidemiology and pandemic response who know what they're doing and see the failures should continue to refuse to sign their name to bad policy and publicize their issues with it. That's what the Great Barrington Declaration was and what some who have resigned from certain positions at the CDC have done. The main justification for bad policy has been "the support of experts". Public health experts are having their field tarnished dramatically by being leaned upon in name by people that are ignoring their actual advice. They should stop allowing it. They have the most power to hold irresponsible politicians accountable, and should exercise it. The amount of good disaster management strategy that was thrown out because it had the potential to look bad and was more difficult to implement than ineffective measures (like designating certain areas safe spots for at risk people and providing spaces for them to shelter during spikes) should be more publicized.

jorgesborges 5y ago

The pandemic playbook was designed to manage and mitigate “communication dilemmas”, not execute a strategic health response — which isn’t necessarily incompetent. It’s prescient enough to recognize that our greatest danger isn’t a virus but paralysis and inertia, a struggle to digest information and propaganda, an inability to understand or engage with one another, distrust and inefficacy crippling our institutions, waning authority of media and journalism, etc. For anyone who hasn’t read through John Hopkins simulated SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 it’s pretty interesting [0]. They discuss controversies concerning medical treatments, anti-vaxxers, and strategies to engage in propaganda wars on social media. Disclaimer: not wearing a tinfoil hat, no the report isn’t part of a conspiracy to railroad the population into vaccines, but it does reveal a certain ineptitude and bad faith. [0] https://jhsphcenterforhealthsecurity.s3.amazonaws.com/spars-pandemic-scenario.pdf https://jhsphcenterforhealthsecurity.s3.amazonaws.com/spars-...