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I remember that line too but it’s just a slogan, it doesn’t really have normative meaning. For example, closing public beaches was an overreaction. It was poin

by CPLX 3y ago

I remember that line too but it’s just a slogan, it doesn’t really have normative meaning. For example, closing public beaches was an overreaction. It was pointless and had no positive effect at all. Noticing that doesn’t prove that we did enough. It’s still possible that we didn’t manufacture vaccines or staff hospitals fast enough for example.

andybak 3y ago
I think broadly speaking there were plenty of outdoor measures that quickly felt like overreactions. Indoor measures often felt the opposite (at least in terms of how they actually played out)
lazide 3y ago
Eh, that’s very much hindsight bias. We didn’t know at the time that closing beaches was useless. Once we found out, those bans started to be reversed. That is why the ‘slogan’. If you take proactive precautions based on what might help, you’ll always look like you were overreacting afterwards because not all of them will be true. On the flip side, if you wait for solid evidence of what is actually effective or not, you’ll definitely end up with much larger spread and more damage, because it takes a lot of time for that data to be gathered, confounding variables to be identified, etc. In the face of an unknown pathogen, (like an unknown enemy in a war), it’s important to defend against apparent threats, not just wait to see which ones are real - as by then it’s too late.
- junofan 3y ago
  I mean, coronaviruses are some of the most studied human pathogens on the planet, especially after SARS. The whole “we don’t know what we’re dealing with” shtick was hard to swallow. Health authorities should have been better prepared for a respiratory pandemic, period. We spend too much money on public health for the response we got.
  - fzeroracer 3y ago
    By all means then, if you're an expert then why didn't you tell us about the disease when it got started? Think of all the lives you, personally, could've saved if you shared your expert knowledge. Knowledge that no one else in the entire world knew about apparently as the disease transitioned to a pandemic. I assume that at least one health authority on this planet would've been prepared and know exactly how to respond, according to your expertise.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      I mean that goes back to the point this comment thread is attached to. Knowing things doesn't magically grant you power over the spread of the virus. The reality is that nobody had that power and no amount of expertise was going to fix that.
      - lazide 3y ago
        We did have power to reduce deaths early on, pre vaccine, and did okayish. The vaccine does reduce deaths dramatically in sensitive populations. Based on the European data and NYC data, that legitimately did save likely millions of lives in the US.
  - lazide 3y ago
    SARS case fatality rate was 14-15% (roughly). [https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sars/estimates-sars-death-rates-revised-upward https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sars/estimates-sars-death-rates-r...] During the first year of the pandemic, figuring out much of anything except that bodies were piling up faster than they could be managed in all the cities was extremely difficult, and there was a lot of clear political manipulation of the numbers everywhere, so trust was... thin. To put it mildly. COVID was clearly not as bad as SARS, but it was also clearly not the Flu. So what was the correct policy exactly?
    - Izkata 3y ago
      > So what was the correct policy exactly? Here's one easy one: Don't use medical jargon in news/media. For example, they shouldn't have called it a "novel coronavirus". It means something specific and totally different in a medical context as it does to the layperson, and I expect it was a huge part of the overreaction.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  I don't fully agree, some overreactions were simply crowd management pointed at lowest denominator, or most stupidly behaving individuals. In France, one of bastions of freedom (liberte, at least on paper) there was a long period when people could only go 1km from their permanent residence. Even if you were a sporty person, wanted to keep fit, and did completely alone with absolutely 0 risk trail running in the alps around you, you were breaking the law. Cops could get nasty if they caught you. Neighboring Switzerland never applied similar restrictions, they trust their population way more. That was smarter approach, and it sure as hell looked as that even during those times. In my crappy eastern europe home country, there was curfew after 8pm long after most of western europe abandoned any restrictions. I like to clear my head by long evening walks. I simply couldn't when being home, it felt I came to North Korea since cops back there are overzealous and often enjoy flexing their powers on common folks. Many policies were good and at least somewhat effective, some were outright restrictive or punitive bullshit with 0 positive effect, just fucking up people mentally more than they already were. That I think was the main point of critique - policy makers looked hard on numbers alone, not on psychological impacts of pushing too far. Its like chasing everything that kills people, you soon end up banning all cars since numbers alone are pretty horrible. We have generation of kids who are subtly (or not) fucked up, more than they should have been. Maybe 50 million affected? Many grandmas would gladly increase their risks a bit if they could see more freedom to their grandchildren, you have different (often better) priorities when older.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Every generation is subtly (or not) fucked up, near as I can tell. But most old folks I know were explicitly NOT visiting folks, not because of policies, but because they didn't want to die. And some I know that did anyway did in fact die - and their family has to deal with knowing they infected them and caused them to die. Which also causes some serious head fucking up.
- CPLX 3y ago
  I’m kind of exhausted with public policy elites lecturing me about hindsight bias. Year after year we’re treated to idiotic policy decisions with obvious consequence like invading middle eastern countries for no reason, allowing obviously illegal and harmful market consolidation and mergers, mass delivery of opiates to literally everyone, and so forth. All the while people who gain massive amounts of power and money from the system tell us we’re just not “serious” when we predict the consequences. We’re told to trust the experts but then the self apointed expert class is not held accountable whatsoever when they come true. Fuck that, if people want to be entrusted with policy power they should get things right. And if they get it wrong, fine, but let’s hold them accountable and notice who was right the whole time. A lot of the Covid policy decisions were idiotic and symbolic and wildly inconsistent, and many were based on lies or conflict of interest. It’s fine to notice that this is a problem.
  - lazide 3y ago
    So I'm a public policy elite now? Sweet! Those things you're talking about don't seem to have anything to do with the topic at hand though? I agree re: many of the Covid policy decisions you mention at the end, but frankly given the options they had available I'm not sure I (or anyone) could have done anything different given the circumstances.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      The systematic corruption of basically all our public policy institutions over the last two generations has quite a bit to do with the topic at hand, which was the response to the pandemic. And not you obviously, but my point is that "nobody could have predicted" is such an overused response by people with authority it should be banned. In every relevant instance of major policy failure people actually did predict it, but the people in charge were corrupted by the wrong incentives, made predictable mistakes, and don't feel like being held accountable for it.
      - lazide 3y ago
        If no one could have actually predicted it though, isn’t it a valid excuse? Who exactly should be held accountable how, anyway? Near as I can tell, none of them were meaningfully violating any laws. If anything, they were being extremely cautious not to. The public health acts give them a LOT more power than they were using.

by CPLX 3y ago

andybak 3y ago

I think broadly speaking there were plenty of outdoor measures that quickly felt like overreactions. Indoor measures often felt the opposite (at least in terms of how they actually played out)

lazide 3y ago

Eh, that’s very much hindsight bias. We didn’t know at the time that closing beaches was useless. Once we found out, those bans started to be reversed. That is why the ‘slogan’. If you take proactive precautions based on what might help, you’ll always look like you were overreacting afterwards because not all of them will be true. On the flip side, if you wait for solid evidence of what is actually effective or not, you’ll definitely end up with much larger spread and more damage, because it takes a lot of time for that data to be gathered, confounding variables to be identified, etc. In the face of an unknown pathogen, (like an unknown enemy in a war), it’s important to defend against apparent threats, not just wait to see which ones are real - as by then it’s too late.

junofan 3y ago
I mean, coronaviruses are some of the most studied human pathogens on the planet, especially after SARS. The whole “we don’t know what we’re dealing with” shtick was hard to swallow. Health authorities should have been better prepared for a respiratory pandemic, period. We spend too much money on public health for the response we got.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  By all means then, if you're an expert then why didn't you tell us about the disease when it got started? Think of all the lives you, personally, could've saved if you shared your expert knowledge. Knowledge that no one else in the entire world knew about apparently as the disease transitioned to a pandemic. I assume that at least one health authority on this planet would've been prepared and know exactly how to respond, according to your expertise.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    I mean that goes back to the point this comment thread is attached to. Knowing things doesn't magically grant you power over the spread of the virus. The reality is that nobody had that power and no amount of expertise was going to fix that.
    - lazide 3y ago
      We did have power to reduce deaths early on, pre vaccine, and did okayish. The vaccine does reduce deaths dramatically in sensitive populations. Based on the European data and NYC data, that legitimately did save likely millions of lives in the US.
- lazide 3y ago
  SARS case fatality rate was 14-15% (roughly). [https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sars/estimates-sars-death-rates-revised-upward https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sars/estimates-sars-death-rates-r...] During the first year of the pandemic, figuring out much of anything except that bodies were piling up faster than they could be managed in all the cities was extremely difficult, and there was a lot of clear political manipulation of the numbers everywhere, so trust was... thin. To put it mildly. COVID was clearly not as bad as SARS, but it was also clearly not the Flu. So what was the correct policy exactly?
  - Izkata 3y ago
    > So what was the correct policy exactly? Here's one easy one: Don't use medical jargon in news/media. For example, they shouldn't have called it a "novel coronavirus". It means something specific and totally different in a medical context as it does to the layperson, and I expect it was a huge part of the overreaction.
saiya-jin 3y ago
I don't fully agree, some overreactions were simply crowd management pointed at lowest denominator, or most stupidly behaving individuals. In France, one of bastions of freedom (liberte, at least on paper) there was a long period when people could only go 1km from their permanent residence. Even if you were a sporty person, wanted to keep fit, and did completely alone with absolutely 0 risk trail running in the alps around you, you were breaking the law. Cops could get nasty if they caught you. Neighboring Switzerland never applied similar restrictions, they trust their population way more. That was smarter approach, and it sure as hell looked as that even during those times. In my crappy eastern europe home country, there was curfew after 8pm long after most of western europe abandoned any restrictions. I like to clear my head by long evening walks. I simply couldn't when being home, it felt I came to North Korea since cops back there are overzealous and often enjoy flexing their powers on common folks. Many policies were good and at least somewhat effective, some were outright restrictive or punitive bullshit with 0 positive effect, just fucking up people mentally more than they already were. That I think was the main point of critique - policy makers looked hard on numbers alone, not on psychological impacts of pushing too far. Its like chasing everything that kills people, you soon end up banning all cars since numbers alone are pretty horrible. We have generation of kids who are subtly (or not) fucked up, more than they should have been. Maybe 50 million affected? Many grandmas would gladly increase their risks a bit if they could see more freedom to their grandchildren, you have different (often better) priorities when older.
- lazide 3y ago
  Every generation is subtly (or not) fucked up, near as I can tell. But most old folks I know were explicitly NOT visiting folks, not because of policies, but because they didn't want to die. And some I know that did anyway did in fact die - and their family has to deal with knowing they infected them and caused them to die. Which also causes some serious head fucking up.
CPLX 3y ago
I’m kind of exhausted with public policy elites lecturing me about hindsight bias. Year after year we’re treated to idiotic policy decisions with obvious consequence like invading middle eastern countries for no reason, allowing obviously illegal and harmful market consolidation and mergers, mass delivery of opiates to literally everyone, and so forth. All the while people who gain massive amounts of power and money from the system tell us we’re just not “serious” when we predict the consequences. We’re told to trust the experts but then the self apointed expert class is not held accountable whatsoever when they come true. Fuck that, if people want to be entrusted with policy power they should get things right. And if they get it wrong, fine, but let’s hold them accountable and notice who was right the whole time. A lot of the Covid policy decisions were idiotic and symbolic and wildly inconsistent, and many were based on lies or conflict of interest. It’s fine to notice that this is a problem.
- lazide 3y ago
  So I'm a public policy elite now? Sweet! Those things you're talking about don't seem to have anything to do with the topic at hand though? I agree re: many of the Covid policy decisions you mention at the end, but frankly given the options they had available I'm not sure I (or anyone) could have done anything different given the circumstances.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    The systematic corruption of basically all our public policy institutions over the last two generations has quite a bit to do with the topic at hand, which was the response to the pandemic. And not you obviously, but my point is that "nobody could have predicted" is such an overused response by people with authority it should be banned. In every relevant instance of major policy failure people actually did predict it, but the people in charge were corrupted by the wrong incentives, made predictable mistakes, and don't feel like being held accountable for it.
    - lazide 3y ago
      If no one could have actually predicted it though, isn’t it a valid excuse? Who exactly should be held accountable how, anyway? Near as I can tell, none of them were meaningfully violating any laws. If anything, they were being extremely cautious not to. The public health acts give them a LOT more power than they were using.