Is there a word or phrase for the act of poorly implementing an idea, then using the failed result as a way to discredit the idea? It's like a straw man argument but done in practice rather than in argument.
Yes this is complete bullshit. Wuhan and now Italy are showing that travel bans are very important.
edit: When I say Travel Ban, I'm also thinking of a soft lockdown such as Italy have implemented, which is slightly different to a travel ban in some senses.
edit: To be clear, as well as restricting travel out of an area, we're also talking about reducing movement _within_ that area. So it ties into Social Distancing really.
First off: I'm sure the Germans have something. :)
Otherwise, some candidates:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_ge...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrelevant_conclusion#Red_herr...
I wish they would apply that logic to whenever they implement more surveillance measures.
The goal is to slow infection, not prevent it. We could hypothetically have a much greater infection rate than we do today.
> Is there a word or phrase for the act of poorly implementing an idea, then using the failed result as a way to discredit the idea? It's like a straw man argument but done in practice rather than in argument.
I don't know, so I'm going to coin a term for it: dishonest experiment.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu "n Japan, 257,363 deaths were attributed to influenza by July 1919, giving an estimated 0.4% mortality rate, much lower than nearly all other Asian countries for which data are available. The Japanese government severely restricted sea travel to and from the home islands when the pandemic struck."
So evidence suggest it's not futile. So , you're right , maybe you're looking for "projection" or "cherry picking".
* "We already tried that."
* Once bitten, twice shy.
* Not giving the idea a chance; not giving it a fair shake.
* Giving up on an idea too easily.
* Closing your mind to a possibility.
For what it's worth, I think both the poor implementation and the wrong conclusion can be either deliberate or accidental. In this case, the poor implementation was almost definitely accidental, and most likely the reporter isn't actively trying to discredit the idea; they are just leaping to a conclusion. So the best phrase might be vary depending on whether it's just poor reasoning or an underhanded attempt to manipulate people's views.
Also, on a tangent, there's probably some validity to this kind of reasoning. Sometimes in problem-solving there are almost an infinite number of things you could try. If you spend all your resources going down one particular rat hole that doesn't seem to be working, you may never move on to exploring the rest of the solution space. In practice, it can make a lot of sense to essentially do a breadth-first search of possible approaches. The error isn't in using a breadth-first order; it's in deleting things from the FIFO queue of stuff to try eventually (or never adding). And the other common error is in assuming you can't or shouldn't try to do both in parallel.
It might not be that specific, but "faulty generalization"[1] might fit the bill. The Wiki article offers other phrases like "jumping to conclusions" and "fallacy of defective induction".
I would like to know if there is a name for specifically doing the poor implementation with the malicious purpose of discrediting the idea.
It's related, but it's not the same thing.
EDIT: Note that I'm assuming that prematurely leaping to the conclusion isn't deliberate on the part of the reporter here. If it were, then maybe it would be the same thing.
Edit: I think that's a quote from some well-known person, but I'm having no luck looking it up.
It's also not unlikely that there are "other" patient zeros and then there are all the thinks about bad implementation of measurements and potential spread before measurements where implemented.
Also it's all about _slowing_ spread, with the properties SARS-Cov-2 is believed to have it's likely impossible to contain it anymore in long term. (IMHO)
But each day we gain saves lives by giving us more time in finding usable medicine or even vaccine and producing it.
Additionally it reduces the load on the hospitals, if we do not slow the spread it will infect to many people at the same time to early. Which likely will lead to people not getting the appropriate medical care which likely will make the infected->death rate increase noticeable.
So it's a typical "it's not perfect so lets not do it at all straw man argument" which is this case is very dangerous as it can cost human lives.
Also given that they wrote:
> County health officials located more than 60 people who’d come in contact with him,[..] fully recovered. Somehow, someone was missed.
It's strange to end up with travel bans are futile? A conclusion like "it's hard to find all contact persons" would be better.
> All the careful medical detective work, it’s now clear, wasn’t enough to slow a virus moving faster than the world’s efforts to contain it.
This is supper missguiding, sure in this case it's not wrong, but if a single of the 60 checked people would have had been infected this would have majorly slowed down the spread. In the end the first quote said it all: Someone was missed. And IMHO someone will most times have been missed and sometimes that one will have been infected, so the spread won't be stopped. But it will be slowed down. Which is most important.
(Edit: when I said everyone, I'm thinking of 'everyone' with regards to contagion like the normal flu that goes around. There are always outliers and people who miss it. Didn't think I had to spell that one out. Evidently I did.)
However controlling the rate of infection (coefficient of the exponent) can make the difference between hospitals able to handle the disease, versus hospitals getting completely flooded and having more die due to not enough care.
Tl;dr. You're going to get it, but you don't want everyone getting it at once.
It seems obvious that you are right that everyone will get it. The real quibble is what will the death rate actually be. 2.5% seems like a middle-of-the-road estimate according to current knowledge.
I think using simple exponential numbers to predict future cases is too simplistic if we don't take into account how people's changing behavior will affect the spread.
I mostly just wonder where the threshold is between population density and social distancing and R0. Obviously total quarantine does wonders, and completely normal behavior is terrible, but is it enough if half the population takes precautions? Or 2/3 or 1/3?
I've been thinking of it kind of like a graph or a web, and if you cut enough of the connections, the spread stops, and "enough" isn't anything like "all," and the more strategically placed the cuts are, the fewer there can be, but it's not easy to figure out exactly how many cuts you need.
They had hard quarantines up to and including jail-like cells to enforce those orders.
They had significant amounts of PPE brought in rapidly.
They built a hospital in a month at ground zero.
They provided thermal camera helmets to police to catch people with a high temperature (most common ailment with coronavirus).
In effect, they knew they had a diaster on their hands, and responded rapidly. And it shows in their numbers.
In the USA, We refused the the WHO's tests in favor of some for profit company. And we had 1/12 the tests promised by last Friday.
Hospitals aren't able to test even highly suspect cases.
Quarantines are considered optional, with dozens of cases of "I'm special and ignore quarantine suggestions".
There's no sick pay, so those who haven't been tested are working sick. Vomiting, a easy way to go home, is only present in 1% of the cases infected.
And perhaps 'everyone will get it' was exaggerating - but I'm seeing this as similar to the flu, with a 5 day asymptomatic period and a 2.5% chance of death, as opposed to .1% .
Wuhan still stands out rearding mortality so, with almost 5%. Total deaths there stand at 3,000, the rest of the world, includig the rest of China, stand at roughly 900. Wuhan is overrepresented. No idea why, but I am certain experts are working on that question. South Korea on the other hand has mrtality rate of under 1%.
Source: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
Totally agree on the testing issue in the US, so. That, combined with the non-existing sick leave insentivising people to not see a doctor and continue to go to work could become a major problem, so. In Europe it's easy, just send people home on sick leave, Germany allows you up to 6 weeks per year per illness. Doctors visits are free for patients as are blood tests. Without all that, the game changes.
From what I understood the true mortality rate can only reliably be established after the pandemic. During it is moving target. Now, this uncertainty is something normal it seems. I can live with that.
What I would love, so, is a breakdown by age group, gender, preexisting conditions and so on. Also how these groups are overall represented in the population of the individual regions. Then at least we would have a first indication if certain groups are overrepresented or not.
Reducing COVID-19 to just one overall percentage number is insufficient I think. But yes, Italy stands out.
Currently, the global CFR is around 3%. In China, almost 4%. The CFR for the rest of the world (excluding China) is almost 2%.
However, I think the lesson of china and italy is that when hospitals get overwhelmed, people will freak out and start staying home, so the rate of infection in a 'burn out' scenario is probably significantly lower than even 30 or 40%.
But I hope that someone in government is thinking like this and taking actions accordingly.
Being pessimistic isn't and overshooting your precautions is probably smarter than thinking we are going to have a "cure" in a few weeks, like POTUS said.
Because of the way 'We' (royal) have structured our economy and govt assistance systems, the working poor will have the highest contagion rates and serve to spread it rapidly. They have meager insurance, if any at all. They have no sick days, and certainly not paid sick leave. And being threatened to come to work sick is a common thing. Even Starbucks did that to me.
And from what I know about the laws, I don't believe quarantines can legally order you in. Everything so far has been a suggested self-quarantine.
I don't paint a pretty picture. That's because I've worked in food service while sick. I made your food, and infected you. I chose to do that vs be destitute.