Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat
ma.ttias.be
ma.ttias.be
Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis:
In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home.
I'm not saying this is bad, I just think such recommendations and articles should come from people that have more experience with modeling such epidemics.
Fitting a dataset with an exponential function is easy, it just doesn't tell us much beyond the current growth rate. It's also a bit ridiculous to judge how bad the situation is in a given country without accounting for differences like the number of tests that are done and the overall population of these countries.
On the other hand, online stuff like said growth hacker can draw a lot of attention. This will end up in the mainstream. That diseases aren't exponential, who cares when exponential curves fit so nicely early on.
What could, and should, be done by large tech companies is preventing this. Google could make sure that every Corona related search ends up showing the WHO on top, followed by local sources like the CDC, Robert Koch, John Hopkins and so on. They could support these parties in getting them up in the search results. Facebook could do the same, as does Twitter. In Germany, you have to explicitly include Robert Koch or RKI in your search for the link to show. Even by doing so, earlier today it still wasn't the tip link. The rest is reporting crap written every time a new case was found somewhere.
And yet, nothing like that happens.
Follow the logic through.
South Korea is detecting ~100 cases per day on top of a total of 7,700 and 66 deaths. Total population is 50 million people.
How long do you shut down the economy over a disease where you are detecting 100 cases per day with a CFR of 0.8%?
Seems like this is a perfect example of the curve being too flat.
Counting individual cases and deaths in a country of 300 million is nonsensical. You could do the same thing with the flu and you'd hit 20,000 deaths a year and you'd destroy the economy in the process.
IMO, the solution is best preparing to treat the number of people who do become severely ill from it, and getting the rest of the country fully back to work as quickly as possible.
Although I disagree strongly on the "kill 10% of your population" bit, which is just fear-mongering, it's kind of besides the point.
If every case went untreated, 10% is a reasonable guess about what the death rate would be. Unchecked growth would lead to almost every case going untreated. That's the penalty for allowing the number of active cases to rise above five times the number of open beds/ventilators.
Modelling the beginning of an epidemic as exponential growth is useful, sensible and empirically validated. As, countermeasures are taken during the beginning of the epidemic, for discussions of the effect of countermeasures, exponential is the correct model.
In fact, hopefully the countermeasures taken will be sufficient that the intrinsic disease dynamic will never get past the exponential stage...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infe...
If you find any source, idealy scientific papers on the subject, that shows that contagious diseases can be modelled with simple exponential functions, please share them. I am not an expert on that matter, so I would be really interessted to see some reliable sources confirming the use of exponential functions.
Notice that the rate of change in the infected population (dI/dt) is proportional to the current number of infected (I) and the current number of susceptible (S).
In the early stages, when S is large and I is still small, this acts just like an exponential function in I.
For example, think about what happens when you double I the first several times. S stays relatively unchanged, and so dI/dt roughly doubles each time you double I.
Does that make sense?
People keep mentioning the exponential because both of these curves, at an important point in time, grow very fast. Much faster than anything you're likely to encounter in daily life, so the public really doesn't have the requisite intuition.
But I can see you're not interested in understanding the point. You asked for equations, I gave you equations. Good day sir.
These three words are simply to often drowned out in discussions about COVID-19. That's we you see extrapolations of this growth against, for example, the population of Italy. And this is dangerous. And I don't think we disagree here, I never disputed the exponential nature of the early phase.
We just shouldn't make the mistake in assuming everybody catches these three little words, especially not online.
The most critical question everybody is trying to answer right now is, when the peak will be. And whether this peak will to high for our medical infrastructure. With all the measures being taken, the conclusion seems to be the point will be too high. Hence the counter measures. So we should all do what we can to flatten the curve as much as possible. I never said anything else, and honestly, I don't see where are disagreeing here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infe...
S = N - I - R, and lets used normalized ratios, so i = I/N, r = R/N, etc... so the dynamics of i are given by:
di/dt = beta (1 - i - r) i - gamma i
di/dt = (beta - gamma) i - beta (i^2 + ri)
At the beginning of the disease, the ratio of infected and recovered is very small, say 1e-5 for 100 cases in a population of 10 million. So initially the second term is 1e-10 whereas the first is 1e-5. The initial dynamics of a new disease are given by:
di/dt ~ (beta - gamma) i
exponential growth. It will start deviating from exponential growth once i becomes large enough. If 10% of the population have had the disease it will deviate from exponential growth by 10%. Once it gets to half the population being infected or recovered you start seeing a real deviation.
In reality this might never happen, because we are taking a lot of measures to get beta down. So really you have something like
di/dt ~ (beta(t) - gamma) i
where beta(t) will capture all the countermeasures people take. If the countermeasures are effective and manage to push beta(t) below gamma before a large chunk of the population is infected, we might never see non-exponential behaviour from the disease. It will have an exponentially growing phase, and then an exponentially shrinking phase.
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Here is just one paper I found with two seconds of google that looks at this, very recent, a bit basic:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6962332/
But here is what it says in the abstract:
"The initial exponential growth rate of an epidemic is an important measure of the severeness of the epidemic, and is also closely related to the basic reproduction number."
"Classical compartmental transmission models assume exponential growth during the early phase of a well-mixed population"
Key word, initial. Later on, not so much. Which is the whole point, pandemics aren't exponential over the complete run time. So, why not using these formulas at least in the models instead of using exponential equation limited by world population?
Edit:
"It will have an exponentially growing phase, and then an exponentially shrinking phase"
Confirming the point above. Math is a precise science, it's a while since I did stuff like that, but getting equations right or not used to be a big deal back than. And now we talking more serious things than just a grade in an exam.
You're free to use whatever sensible model you want in your analysis, but you are criticising people for using exponential models. You have no arguments for that. Then you throw out Wikipedia, falsely claiming that exponential models are nowhere to be found there. Then you demand peer reviewed studies that use an exponential model, which I provide. But somehow that is not enough either.
In fact there are numerous assumptions in the SIR/exponential growth model. These might not hold. We might get slightly sub-exponential growth in some diseases. There is vast literature on that. But the base line in all the vast literature on this is that the most natural, obvious and common behaviour is exponential.
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline
it = pd.read_json('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/master/dati-json/dpc-covid19-ita-andamento-nazionale.json',
convert_dates=True).set_index('data')
plt.plot(it[['deceduti', 'totale_casi']])
plt.xticks(it.index.values, rotation=90);If you look at the Wuhan data, you see that the lockdown worked, but the number of confirmed cases at the time continued to rise dramatically until 12 days after the lockdown went into effect. We are only three days in on the Italy lockdown.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130
Figure 1.
Shouting this point does more bad than good. Outbreaks are exponential in their initial stage, to an extremely good level of approximation. Sure, they're ultimately s-shaped, but we're far from the bend point. That the growth starts to deviate from the exponent a tiny bit when half of your country is sick isn't a useful observation right now.
1) Herd immunity has kicked in, meaning a majority of people have already been infected and are recovering/recovered
2) Containment measures were effective against a highly communicative virus which can live in the air for 3 hours and on surfaces for up to 12 hours.
3) They just stopped testing and/or are lying about the results and are hiding the resulting health care burden.
IMO the only one here that doesn’t require competency on the part of the government is #1, making it by far the most likely scenario.
If #1 is true to any extent, then it means IFR is actually quite low, more like 2009’s H1N1.
The other fundamental question I keep going back and forth on is the final total population infection rate. For H1N1 and other flus it’s usually on the order of 10-30% of the population. (There are arguments why this one might be higher, although I think some people confuse exposure numbers with infection numbers...)
Containment supposedly will not meaningfully reduce this ultimate number but would just slow down how long it takes for everyone to ultimately be exposed.
So while there are very few new cases in China (and they are closing their temporary hospitals) what happens when people go back to work?
Cultural factors: how quickly do people change their habits, to do e.g. social distancing. Do people in public wear surgical masks. Population density, temperature, weather,...
Lying governments: I don't think South Korea or Italy are lying, but Iran is for sure, and China up to some point (at least early on). Italy stopped testing at some point, but this is known. South Korea increased testing over time.
Herd immunity: maybe a part of the population was already immune before (too early to say), but it couldn't have "kicked in" during this year as there was only one wave yet.
There is no question whatsoever that this corona virus IFR is a lot higher than the 2009 H1N1 flu, but lower than the 1918 H1N1 flu. When comparing countries / regions, you should consider the population age pyramid (Italy has more old people than South Korea) and how overwhelmed the hospitals are (I think quite bad in Italy and Wuhan).
This is the problem. Not that our institutions are failing to deal with the problem, but that our media has vastly overblown the whole situation in order to scare everyone witless so they'll keep clicking on news updates and watch those ads.
With the secondary effect, of course, that all searches for information end up at a media outlet trying to scare people, and not the appropriate primary source of suitable information.
And the tertiary effect that an institution presenting non-sensationalist data based on research is dismissed as an "inadequate response" if it doesn't match the hyperbolic media frenzy.
We should be shutting down newspapers, not schools.
But in all seriousness, I am absolutely disappointed with the reactions of Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on this. Everybody made a well deserved fuzz about the 2016 US election. So these companies are absolutely aware of this. Now that the stakes are much higher. Still no response, no action.
Help the above mentioned institutions to write their "content" in a social media optimized way. That would be agreat opportunity for these tech giants to gain trust they lost since 2016. Not doing anything right now moght very well have the opposite effect.
I would prefer to not get these from some journalist writig his tenth article today.
Personally, I am also very cautious with virologists taking the cable news and talk show turs right now. Where are they taking the time from to do so? If they are spokes people from institutions, it is different. But if their function is "professor at university X", my gut feeling tells me that they might like the public attention a tad too much.
This is a very interesting perspective, which is very different from my own. Being in the US, my attitude is that officials are usually chosen based on criteria other than their skills in the domain they are administrating, and I would expect the best knowledge on any subject to be found among low-level people who deal with it professionally. I am also suspicious that officials might prioritize maintaining public order over disseminating true information, which caused many unnecessary deaths during the Spanish Flu.
>I would prefer to not get these from some journalist writing his tenth article today.
That's true enough. But I would rather have information from front-line experts than administrative officials.
You don't hear from the frontline people / orgs, I assume because the are simply too busy right now. Which brings me back to the professor acting basically as a free agent. That should change.
Communications are beast.
The WHO are literally the organisation we specify to deal with this problem. If they're staffed with the wrong people, that's a different problem.
The WHO is making science-based responses, which are then perceived as "inadequate" by a public stoked into a frenzy by the media. The media are not motivated by public good, but by profit. The more scared you are, the more times you hit refresh.
We should definitely give WHO top billing on search results, because these are the people we've entrusted to do exactly the right thing in response to this situation. Giving top billing to profit-driven media companies is utterly irresponsible.
Or if we've got this wrong, then sack the WHO and appoint a half-dozen billionaires to their role. Same same.
People keep turning to the media because our institutional outlets provide inadequate information for the majority of the population. The institutions default to saying nothing useful because they are scared of blow-back.
I check my city, county, state, and world health sites and there is simply inadequate for my needs. I want to know what closures are in place in my community. I want to know if asymptomatic transmission is real. I want to know if there is a plan to widen the testing criteria.
You have to sift through the garbage, but the content exits. to use the topics I listed above as an examples, I can find more details on local closures and outbreaks in the local news the local department of public health. Similarly, I have found coverage and links to medical journal publications embedded in articles. Lastly, the institutions are avoiding disclosure of next steps or plans like the plague ( no pun intended). Either they have no plan for the days to come, or they are intentionally withholding information. On the other hand, there are a number of media outlets, mostly non-traditional, that are providing projections based on other counties.
There's a lot of money to be made from scaring people.
The problem with models used by experts is that they are diverse hard to parameterize and that the scientific conclusions drawn are based on many different models not on one.
It's a very fluid situation.
I also would wish for better explanations from the scientists actively working on it. My first go to is RKI.
I know of a certain company whose entire purpose is building and selling a product that lets you plug in equations of complex, dynamic systems and play with the models to understand and predict things. Like serious, industrial-grade stuff that's used to design chemical plants. They could easily get a virologist on call and model the spread more sensibly, or even individual countries in detail, and release that - which would give a basis for people to discuss what to do and when in a much better way that's happening now. They'd probably also save themselves a year's worth of marketing expenses. But I don't see them, or any of their competitors doing anything like this.
I'm thoroughly disappointed. Is the ArcGIS dashboard from John Hopkins University really the best our civilization has to offer in terms of informing people and evidence-based discussions? Because while I want to believe that our politicians have more sophisticated tools available, I'm pretty sure they're just looking at the same dashboards and same news stories as we do.
People who model the effects of climate change, like Nate Silver and the 538 crew, run thousands of simulations and present a summary. Even then you can get hung up on the "unknown unknowns".
For instance 1970s estimates of nuclear reactor accidents assumed the main risk was that the pressure vessel was going to burst. That's an easy risk to control, so you hardly ever hear of a pressure vessel bursting at a chemical plant, but all the time people blow up or suck in storage tanks that can't handle 1 psi of under or overpressure.
Now really a legacy nuclear power plant melts down 100% of the time if the power goes out and they can't start the emergency generators. That happens a lot more than bursting pressure vessels!
My point is: we have the tooling necessary to talk about this problem better, more accurately, more precisely, in real-time, and to cover more angles simultaneously - which would lead to better decisions. But we're not using it. At least not publicly.
(This is a part of a general issue of mine, that we absolutely suck at having any kind of data-based discussion; best what we do is exchange badly made charts and context-free data points. We should be exchanging and discussing whole dynamic models. But I suppose this wider issue can wait until we're done with the coronavirus mess.)
Why wo don't have anything from these bodies is a different story, so.
Assuming they have[0], my core issue is: why won't they share them? Society is not 100% made of illiterate rubes who can only add (but not multiply) and read a line chart (and get confused by a log scale). There's enough people who could make use of more sophisticated information, including politicians and political advisors.
The discussion about e.g. whether a country should stop mass gatherings now or later would be infinitely better if it wasn't just "I think so" and "we have to flatten the curve!!11", but instead if one could say "look, the WHO model shows it won't help much", or "an alternative model proposed by virologist X suggests that it has most benefits if done today; here, look at this chart", especially if people could play with the models themselves and propose corrections.
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[0] - I'm not convinced; I have the feeling most work in this space is still done with Excel or basic Python and R toolkits.
also, I don't care about the tools they use. As lonfg as the results are correct.
> There's enough people who could make use of more sophisticated information, including politicians and political advisors.
Far be it from me to suggest politicians and political advisors are "illiterate rubes", however I can tell you with confidence that in my experience politicians don't like numbers and models and won't listen to you if you try to tell them about them. Fundamentally this means that even when they're not actually illiterate, they are functionally illiterate (unless of course said model serves their political interest exactly).
But soft numbers are a common issue with many areas of public health. In particular, analysis of the current pandemic suffers from both a "numerator" and "denominator" problem (http://conflict.lshtm.ac.uk/page_83.htm)
I think many of us are accustomed to getting high-quality stats when studying a process. But that's often not possible with a fast-moving public health issue.
I think you have to acknowledge the limitations of the data, but it can still be helpful.
The thing I _don't_ like about the JHU dashboard is that it doesn't really let you slice the data in interesting ways. For example, I'd like to be able to click on a country or state/province and see temporal data. This doesn't seem like it would be that difficult, but maybe I'm naive.
It would help forming an idea on how the current situation (in addition to the new cases) is going.
Of course, if the center of the prediction is horrifying, "people don't understand confidence intervals" then becomes a case of avoiding societal breakdown.
The problem with Star Trek (esp. TNG) is that it doesn't reflect reality at all. It gives you the idea that the people in charge really know what they're doing and are competent. In our reality, this simply isn't the case.
I love watching TNG reruns to relax. It lets me fantasize about living in a well-run society run by mostly competent people. That's not the society I live in now, but this is why this form of entertainment is called "escapist".
Not sure how "widely" shared it is, but it's a good, informative piece.
It does a good job of visual storytelling, the author obviously is good at being a "growth hacker," but it points to something deeply wrong when people are basing their decision-making on a document like this rather than communications from actual public health professionals.
This might actually hold given the groups that are the most at risk are probably least productive: the old and the infirm.
I for one am working towards my old age, I'd hate to be left to just die.
That word doesn't work when describing people who are no longer part of the reproducing population.
Of course I'm not saying that anyone has done those tradeoffs optimally, especially considering that those relations probably are non-linear in practice.
Self perpetuation is fundamentally based only on the implications of the strategy. If keeping elders alive past nominal utility helps spread well then it is effectively favored. Which may or may not be known ahead of time.
That said by being smarter than it we have both the ability and responsibility for the consequences for decisions to follow or defy its nudges as we can and see fit.
Caring well is always better than not caring. Unless we won't care in the green scenario either. But then, who think we won't care if we have time and resources?
And yes, I am prepared to take a hit in my earnings, paying higher taxes if needed after this if that is what it takes for at least one person more to live.
Because grandparent said they would sacrifice a realistic tax increase to save lives in the COVID-19 outbreak, the parent asked about a confiscatory 99% tax rate and asset seizure, which would be wholly unnecessary for paying for the current crisis.
I don't see how the original comment was unreasonable in asking what is the threshold where economic losses are too high. Halting all economic activity to completely stop the spread of the disease and prevent deaths amounts to a 100% taxation since you are forced to not work and generate revenue. Whether that is acceptable or not isn't my point, but asking the question isn't a fallacy
These calculations have to be made because economic impacts also have a death toll. It all comes back to saving lives in the end.
>I am prepared to take a hit in my earnings, paying higher taxes if needed after this if that is what it takes for at least one person more to live.
As a side note, you can do this any time, and unrelated to the pandemic. There are charities you can donate to to save lives if you are so inclined.
From an ethical point of view, governments owe seniors the money and care, because they had worked for state prosperity. Also, if young people had more foresight, they would realize the way seniors are treated today will be more less the way they themselves will be treated. But old age and death is a depressing topic and no one likes to dwell on it.
At least in my country, we spend radically more per-capita on healthcare for the old than we do for the young [1] simply because the old need more of it.
For men age 5-45 we spend less than £1000, for men age 80-85 we spend more than £4500. It's a similar story for women, but with a bump for women of childbearing age.
I don't see any evidence of a bias in favour of the working-age population.
This seems implausible to me. Given that the rich tend to be of rather old age themselves, I'd wager that they'd invest in preventing their own deaths
This is self-evident, both due to first-order and second-order effects. How the author manages to stand it on its head is amazing. It's worth noting that approaching, or exceeding, the capacity of the medical system (or any other) drives the costs sky high by and of itself - not to mention other, unrelated cases that also need treatment. With a few weeks worth of disruption to healthcare, even mild cases of other illnesses can spiral out of control and become costly (or even deadly) on their own.
I wouldn't read too much into a country having a muted or slow response to the pandemic; it's the expected outcome of political and economical systems differing across the globe. There is always a slow country to act, and its citizens might feel entitled to the kind of far-fetched speculation the author posted.
Sounds about right. Belgium and the Netherlands aren't doing very much yet.
One interesting fact I discovered when discussing with my wife last night that I think does shape the discussion here: In the Netherlands, seasonal influenza has ~1% mortality rate -- in the U.S. it's more like 0.1%. This leads to different framings of the comparative severity of Coronavirus in the Netherlands.
(I'm not a healthcare professional nor actuarian; the following is freehand speculation)
There are two key factors. Firstly, USA is much less densely populated, with various additional compounding aspects: social stratification, with many segments of society living mostly in their own areas, and lesser dependence on mass transport. Modern technology and abundance of land allows maintaining a degree of isolation when needed.
Secondly, the healthcare system in USA vs Netherlands is tale of semi-private vs nationalized system. The former has more incentives to be proactive and minimize costs, vs the later having incentives to make a good showing, with payments being assured anyway.
On an individual basis perhaps in theory, but not on a population basis. See underinsured people afraid to go to a doctor until their condition is so bad it warrants an ER visit.
The actual numbers of the cost-effectiveness of US healthcare also shows the complete opposite of "minimizing costs" where it's twice as expensive as any other system
Yikes! If true, do you know why that is?
Three days ago the government held a special meeting about the coronavirus, in which they deliberated that people should stop shaking hands. That's all. They tell people who have come back from a high risk area and have flu symptoms NOT to call their gp and just stay home.
It's more that the Dutch seem to be extremely... relaxed, maybe a bit fatalistic, about illness. It's a "suck it up" attitude. The fact that they're so slow in taking action now doesn't surprise me.
https://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-09/TG_123539_01...
The reality is probably closer to the fact that there isn't anything governments can do about it. They can try to shut down the borders of the country, but that is going to a lot worse and probably won't stop it anyways.
Just because governments can do something and do do something doesn't mean that that something is meaningful or will have a positive impact.
Many things are just outside of their control.
Many decisions can be taken, but are not (for various reasons). Most experts recommend to limit contacts rather than closing down borders, and no one is pretending to stop the virus but they all should try to flatten the curve. You don't seem to pay attention to the current situation.
Afaik in Germany the country's government can't force schools to close or public events to be cancelled. These decisions have to be taken locally (at state/city or even district level). All the health ministry can do is tell people "you shouldn't do A B C and you should do X Y Z"
In the places where they have shut down schools, they can't really do it either. But when government says "do X" and has good reasons, the institutions comply. I'm in the board of a private institution in a country with a shutdown order, and there was really no discussion between the board members that this institution would shut down too, despite there being no legal backing at all.
In other places there are no real consequences for you, even if people die. But there are legal and economic consequences if you shut down without top cover. That is why the government and legislative paralysis is so damaging -- with no safety net, people will prefer the unknown loss over the certain loss.
Not saying it's good or bad, but it's definitely a different system.
Denmark population: 5.6 million.
Doesn't seem like an accurate comparison.
Is there a generic term for this sort of fallacy, where someone brings up a random difference between [cities/states/countries] as an excuse for why one can't do what the other has already done, without ever bothering to explain why the difference matters?
This is almost common sense in the business world. No one thinks BigCo and LittleStartup are capable of the same things or that one's ability or inability to do something is equivalent.
> small states turn out to be better for humans
Source/examples of this? In Europe, the larger countries like the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain don't seem obviously worse off to me than their smaller counterparts. Like if you compare the UK to Ireland, Germany to Austria, Spain to Portugal, etc.
Most of the actions taken are those most likely not affecting those in the target older or immuno-compromised demographic likely to have the serious consequences.
https://omny.fm/shows/inside-the-huddle/03-dr-laura-power-on...
It's a balancing act between lowering infections/death and economic impact.
If it has, there's no point in banning incoming people (maybe you can stop people from leaving so other regions don't get infected, but that's a less strong incentive). If you already have the virus in your country, the best thing you can do is slow its spreading, by banning large groups of people from congregating.
At this point we can trust authorities to have a reasonable approach to this and that they monitor the situation closely. Or we can assume they don't.
In the first case, we follow the action plan. In the latter we do what we can, best based on actions that worked elsewhere. Just complaining about how insufficient actions are in our eyes doesn't help.
Anyway, there plans for stuff like this government drawers everywhere. Ranging from school closures to plan keeping critical infrastructure up. Heritage from the cold war.
And even if the US federal government seems to screw up, states like New York and Washington seem to react rather decisively. And we shouldn't forget that things in China are calming down to an extent ad-hoc hospitals are closed down and medical supplies can be shipped to Italy.
a) There's a time-lag of probably 1-2 weeks between someone becoming infected, until their case hits the official statistics.
b) There will be different rates of testing between different areas, healthcare systems, and countries, which will be hard to quantify.
c) There will be fundamental differences between countries (e.g. patterns of population density, quality/availability of healthcare, etc.) which mean that direct per capita comparisons (as you made) are of little value.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-12/france-cl...
States struggle to get enough masks for medical staff, diverting any for the general public doesn't seem smart. And self made masks will have so little effect that they could be detrimental if people decide to be less careful because they wear a masks.
To the other points, education about hand washing and behavior in public is the one thing governments have all done for weeks now. It just seems that this isn't nearly enough.
Now I understand the logic behind there being shortages. But saying that the general populous shouldn't wear masks because it doesn't do anything doesn't sound accurate.
Most people don't get a good fit of the mask either. Respirators are a bit easier but nowhere near enough of them.
Practically speaking all it does is burn through a small supply of masks.
Thing is, it appears that there's little overlap between actions that seem reasonable and actions that are effective. If you wait until drastic actions seem justifiable, then by that time it's too late to be effective (i.e. the Italy lockdown which would have helped Italy if it was done 2-3 weeks earlier); and if you take effective actions, then most people and media will wonder why you're so authorative and unreasonable (e.g. the reaction to early Wuhan containment measure enforcement).
So the overall cost picture is strongly in favor of early action.
The Moscow Times is currently reporting that there are 28 cases so far. We'll see how that turns out, regardless of whether they're currently telling the truth about it.
Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News | March 12
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-in-rus...
>— A religious procession in central Russia aimed at fighting the coronavirus has been canceled due to the threat of the virus itself.
Apparently they believe the gay isn't the only thing you can pray away.
Trump seeks a 'miracle' as virus fears mount
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/28/politics/donald-trump-cor...
>"It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear," Trump said at the White House Thursday as the virus marched across Asia and Europe after US officials said the US should brace for severe disruption to everyday life.
>The President also warned that things could "get worse before it gets better," but he added it could "maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows."
Doctors in Russia are accusing the government of covering up its coronavirus outbreak and denying them protective equipment
https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-russia-doctors-sa...
>“While the whole world is facing an outbreak of a new coronavirus, Russia is facing an outbreak of a community-acquired pneumonia,” Vasilyeva said. “And as usual, we’re facing the lie of the authorities.”
>She said Russian authorities were referring to coronavirus cases as ordinary pneumonia, implying that they’re distinct from the coronavirus pandemic.
>Russian authorities strongly denied her claims. A statement from the Moscow Department of Health accused her of seeking “to discredit Russian medicine and relevant government agencies” and called for authorities to investigate her.
Coronavirus: Reported spike in pneumonia cases in Moscow as Russia accuses critics of fake news
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...
>“I have a feeling they (the authorities) are lying to us,” said Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of Russia's Doctor's Alliance trade union.
>“I don't believe the coronavirus numbers,” said Ekaterina, a Moscow accountant. “I remember what they told us about Chernobyl at the time. It's only now that we're finding out what really happened.”
https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/30/russia-closes-2700-mile-borde...
They can proactively close schools, government jobs. They can roll out bailout programs to encourage business closings that would otherwise cause the businesses to go bankrupt. They can aggressively close borders, and enforce quarantines with military force. They can mandate the production of respirators, testing kits and other medical necessities.
Government can do A LOT that no other actor can, so I don't quite get where you're coming from with this statement.
And there most certainly are many things the government can do about it. How about Medicare for all people, and for all diseases?
Republicans Want Medicare for All, but Just for This One Disease. Everyone’s a socialist in a pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/opinion/coronavirus-socia...
Closing borders, certainly at this point, seems largely futile.
I've read (true, who knows?) that in the USA this isn't legally possible. Federal government doesn't have that power.
This may be behind Trump's move to stop flights only to Europe, and not domestic flights. He has the power to do the former but not the latter, apparently.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
I'm not sating that it is a good idea, just that judicial review doesn't seem particularly effective.
> there isn't anything governments can do about it.
Banning public events, locking down geographical areas, closing schools, pulling in retired medical workforce etc.
> doesn't mean that that something is meaningful or will have a positive impact
You can see the impact of measures such as enforcing lockdowns (e.g. Wuhan cases) and you can compare the spread of the virus in countries which take measures vs those that do not.
The deaths from Coronavirus are mostly not people of working age. The death rate for 50-59 is around 1%, below that it drops to 0.2%. For seniors it's as high as 20%.
If you want to be cold-blooded about it, there is certainly a case to be made for shrugging and plowing on, as that will minimize the duration of the impact (quarantines, etc) and the people who will die are mostly not economically productive.
To be even more crass - before long we will probably be in a triage situation where there are more cases than resources available to treat. There are only about 20 full-service respirators per 100k people, around 62k nationwide, and many of those are already in use (people will still get in car accidents, have strokes, get meningitis, whatever). We can't treat everybody. So who gets it? Little Timmy who has a long and productive life ahead of him, or great-aunt Susan who's 75 and barely gets around anymore?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21149215
At a first approximation there will be around 100 times as many seniors who need treatment as youngs. From a social perspective it's pretty obvious that treatment should be prioritized for those younger patients.
(reminder that not making a choice is still making a choice, whether that means treatment ends up being first-come first-serve or a financial/insurance basis. Triage sucks, but you have to prioritize your resources somehow or other, the whole problem is there is not enough treatment to go around.)
The quarantine in Italy seemed extreme a week ago, now several countries are heading towards the same measures.
In democracies, curtailing peoples' rights is always tricky, it's the first time I've seen bureaucrats take away individual rights daily without backtracking on decisions.
Trump shut down travel just as doing so became pointless, the USA is barely testing people, and the CDC is resisting drive-through test centres because they are (actual quote) “trying to maintain the relationship between individuals and their healthcare providers.”
1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected
2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted out
3) pandemic, no action -> government was "wrong", caused loss of lives and damaged the economy -> voted out
4) pandemic, action - this is the trickiest scenario, so let's consider two options:
4a) pandemic, action, it works -> government was "right", saved lives, spared the economy -> reelected
4b) pandemic, action, doesn't work -> government was "wrong", their actions failed, they're incompetent -> voted out
There's two winning scenarios, (1) and (4a), but the problem is that (4a) has vanishingly small probability of success... with little information available about the virus, and rampant globalization, it's hard to know what action makes sense, is correct and viable... Case in point is Italy, which did act in time (they banned flights from China 2 weeks before the outbreak), but still failed (i.e. their action was "correct" but not "correct enough") because their neighboring countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act.
So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario.
Another explanation is that government don't realize how much their words and actions have an effect on people's behavior, or they only focus on the worst possible effects ("what if people don't understand or react badly?"). In which case, they downplay the danger only to delay their decision. Because they're afraid of themselves (and can't have trust in the population).
No, the experts are subject to the same game-theoretic play... e.g. WHO declared it a pandemic only yesterday. The only ones who suggested the correct action (ban all flights from China already during Chinese New Year) are the ones with no skin in the game / no decision-making power / no relevance, who are therefore not subject to the game.
Instead governments are weighing the probabilities (think a probability tree, according to your scenarios) you kind of point to this in your conclusion.
The 2 players here are the government, and the voters. The socially optimal scenario is action REGARDLESS of whether it's a pandemic or not (in a hyper-globalized world it would hurt a bit, but only the first time, after that the tourists, supply chains, etc. would adapt) but the voters penalize that outcome (they see action with no pandemic as overreaction not as successful prevention) so governments avoid it.
The question here is which actions of what severity, not simple act or not.
There are many ways to handle this, from maximum quarantine and cancellation of medical appointments, through closing mass gatherings (e.g. schools), rationing, enforced testing, closing public transportation, controlling private transportation, closing airports, sea and river ports, mandatory sampling for tests etc.
Each choice comes with a value for disruption and voter groups it will affect, and value for monetary cost.
Game theory is not too helpful here, as disruption does not directly affect discontent and definitely not your chances of getting elected. These are much more complex decisions with many more actions between here and then.
It is simply up to the government to estimate probability and expected payoff. Optimal action for government is to take the least amount of action to prevent the voters from thinking its a pandemic. It isn't a game theory scenario, there are no nash equilibria.
Because it's hard to know to what degree any actions taken mitigated the severity of the pandemic.
Just compare countries with similar properties that took measures at different points in time.
Japan and Germany might not be the best to compare here, but consider:
Japan, schools closed etc. at 200 cases. 8 days later: 400 cases.
Germany, no action whatsoever at 200 cases, 8 days later: 1600 cases.
But yeah, European countries should make for better comparisons soon.
(And it wasn't closed to travel until recently either.)
Besides, it's a lose/lose proposition for the gov anyway.
If they do act, people will blame them for the cost of the action.
If they don't, people will blame then for the cost of not acting.
Nobody will pat them on the back, except a few intellectuals, for acting.
In fact, economically, the virus spreading is an opportunity to fire people you couldn't fire before, get rid of an old population costing money and have an excuse for a lot of things like passing certain types of law. People will not focus on that, their attention is elsewhere, and you can always invoke the circumstances if they do.
We have created a system in which it's not in the interest of the gov to solve the problem. And in which the population lives in a way that makes it hard to do the right thing by themselves.
Are personal costs of the pandemic encouraging people to support subsidised healthcare, and therefore a left-wing party?
Or is the xenophobic rhetoric of "blame China/Europe/travellers/etc" causing people to support a right-wing party?
I also haven't seen a full discussion of the chain of cause and effect. There was a shift from the primary sector to tertiary services, which led to urbanisation to find demand for services. Young people living in cities can make more friends than before, and this is good! It also means that there are more people living in close quarters, who can spread disease more effectively. I'm willing to face the risks of urban life instead of subsistence farming, but I wonder if other generations resent that.
I see a lot of what you mention on online mediums.
But it's usually quite different than what's really happening IRL.
People love to play the panic game online, but I've seen only quiet order around me.
Yesterday, my entire neighborhood has been evacuated because of a bomb, we were all grouped in an hospital, where we were questioned about possible fever.
In airports, I see people wearing masks, facing cancelled flights. I see stores with huge queues to buy stock of food.
It all happens in a calm and civil manner.
Maybe I'm optimistic, but I'm nicely surprised by the way people act right now, despite all the blame we want to place.
Similar for the right wing.
The entire free-world except the US has subsidized healthcare far in excess of the the American system.
Which is to say: no one in Australia is looking at $1000 COVID-19 tests.
(I don't mean to imply that right-wing = authoritarian; I pair them together because my recollection is that the research in question was specifically about right-wing authoritarianism and not about rightism generally or authoritarianism generally.)
So (1) to whatever extent the GOP is authoritarian as well as right-wing, or at least pushes the same psychological buttons that authoritarian rightists do, it might benefit from having a population that feels afraid, and (2) maybe Mr Trump would have done better politically with something along the lines of "This is a deadly epidemic, sweeping in from scary foreign countries, and only your strong President can protect you and keep you safe". I guess the restriction on air travel from Europe may be intended as a bit of a pivot in that direction.
There’s been some yelling at trump over his poor handling but it’s mostly just virtue signaling at this point. When the elections come around for real we will probably see something of this if/when it has evolved into something more serious here.
I say this in Boston, just a few degrees of separation from some of the COVID confirmed individuals.
This is likely the same segment of the population who have a strong incentive to go to work ignoring risks of community spread. They live pay check to pay check and can't afford to be sick and take time off.
As an emergency measure, the federal government should carry all costs associated with virus testing. Any individual who is quarantined or must stay home to care for those quarantined should receive direct cash transfers to off-set the immediate economic dislocations this causes.
The current federal administration's argument for suspending payroll taxes does nothing for those who are unemployed or work in the informal, cash economy.
Luckily, at the state and local level officials appear more competent placing the health related impacts above politics. As an example, the governor of New York took the unprecedented step of quarantining New Rochelle just outside New York city.
If there is any possibility of a silver lining from all of this, it would be how the U.S. electorate might see the true economic cost of allowing roughly 10% of the population to be uninsured. To me, it is immoral that the richest nation on earth permits those who are most vulnerable not having equal access to adequate healthcare.
Finally, as an indication of how the federal government continues to politicize the pandemic, the Secretary of State continues to call the Covid-19 pandemic, Wuhan virus, as an insult to China.
As a US citizen lucky enough to not be significantly impacted by all of this, I'm deeply embarrassed by such an outrageous insult from a federal official.
If the coronavirus starts impacting the lives of Americans in a widespread manner (shuddered schools, closed offices, loss of jobs), the same instinct will kick in.
Don't act, and you'll get a messup economy because of the panic and the sick people.
Act, and you'll get a messup economy because of the panic and the sick people, and the cost of tests+quarantines+curfew. Less people dead is the ethic thing to do, but power is not about morality.
We have become very cynical people.
History books tell me we have done that for centuries: slavery, wars, ecology...
old people are the base voters for many populist ruling party in Europe
It's not like they don't have the same incentives in the other countries, the main difference is that we do not trust the government. Might be selection bias, but I do think we have been hammered with a stereotype on modern culture about the incompetent/evil bureaucrat getting in the way of the hero's solution.
This is too optimistic. If it works then people see a tiny death rate and a shutdown forced by the government. The greatest success will look like an overreaction.
So it's a complicated problem, with many dynamics at play.
That said, a lot of governments are taking serious measures and apparently not counting the electoral cost.
That and giving smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans was 100% genocidal malice, not a lack of having their shit together. The problem is that they DO have their shit together, and it's racist xenophobic mendacious destructive shit.
The Trump DOJ’s Crazy Back-and-Forth on Coronavirus Prevention Posters
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/what-was-trump-dojs-...
CDC director breaks with Trump on claim that border wall will help stop coronavirus
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/cdc-director-border...
I have serious doubts about this model, but will play along.
What explains:
(a) The exceptions - some countries are acting and doing well. Others are doing better after a delay.
(b) Past, more aggressive actions - many countries, the US included, have responded much more quickly and competently to acute disease crises.
I wouldn't like to be the one to meet the decision, so. Because the cost of closing down a country for a couple of weeks is enormous. So when do put these actions in place? I have no idea, but it seems to be pretty difficult to get the timing right.
There is no point in crying wolf over these actions online, or even worse about what should have been done in hindsight. There are whole staffs doing nothing else right now, experts in their respective fields. So the best we, as a public, can do right now is to get out of these people's way. We follow guidelines like washing hands and reducing contact. We go self quarantine. We take steps we can in our social and professional environment. We send our employees into WFH or close certain cites if that's not possible. We work with authorities to come up with plans and contingencies if our companies are relevant in that regard.
First, there's no "no pandemic" case. Not anymore.
Second, your conclusion says that "politicians choose (1)" but that is not the case at all - almost every country in Europe, Asia, middle east had taken measures, with varying severity, and significant economic cost.
Last but not least, the whole framing is extremely simplistic and follows the "politicians are evil" reddit-like logic.
I am not saying that the analysis is correct, but information that is disclosed now has no bearing on an explanation of the actions of actors in the past.
> Last but not least, the whole framing is extremely simplistic and follows the "politicians are evil" reddit-like logic.
Politicians are people who happen to really care about being reelected. If you have any contact with them, you will realize that this is the ulterior motive of all of their actions. In a sense, as it should be. Being our democratic-elected representatives, it seems reasonable to me that they behave as slaves to the preferences of those who elected them. Like everything else, this creates a bunch of perverse incentives. You would have to be very naive to overlook these things, and imagine that powerful politicians will no put reelection above all things. The ones that didn't did not get reelected, and are not powerful politicians.
The Italian cluster most likely stems from an initial infection in Germany which occurred 10 days before the first flight bans anywhere. Italy probably failed, because it reduced testing to only include symptomatic cases at a critical time ( https://www.adnkronos.com/fatti/cronaca/2020/02/27/coronavir... ), not because Germany did not disallow flights at a time where it was already community spreading in Europe.
That distinction makes for a world of difference in voting behavior.
Shocking.
In times of crisis our system needs leaders who do the right thing over the popular thing, even when it means risking losing office. This is called statesmanship.
Voters would do well to remember this when choosing leaders, it’s an increasingly rare quality we select for.
I'm from Belgium myself, so I can chime in.
Our minister of health is a docter herself, and is advised by a panel of experts including a professor of virology. They know very well what they are doing with the current 400 known infections.
Closing schools makes no sense currently because of following factors:
- kids are not the main factor in spreading the virus, as seen in other countries.
- Putting kids with their grandparents is probaly worse for death toll compared to keeping them in schools.
Look at the exponential growth curve of for example Denmark https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in...
And compare that to the pretty linear growth curve of Belgium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in...
So please stop treating this as game theory. Our country is doing the best thing in this situation.
Edit: denmark link and rude language
Your comment is fine except for that attack. Please don't stoop to that here, regardless of how strongly emotions are running. It helps no one and only makes this place worse.
I don't see much (if any) difference in their responses, so there must be some other factor for Denmark -- e.g. increased travel to Italy, more tourism from China, poorer personal hygiene, ... I don't really know, but
Linear growth would have a declining rate for daily percentage change (adding 10 cases when you have 100 is 10% change, adding 10 when you have 400 is 2.5%).
But if you look at the curve before that, it gave indication that the growth rate was slowing down.
Let's see what tomorrow brings.
Why did Japan close down schools, do they know something which Belgium does not or did Japan make a mistake by closing down schools.
All said I agree with GP that existing evidence suggests kids aren't a driver of the pandemic.
In Belgium, almost everybody works, so kids will go to their grandparents, which is arguable a worse situation.
First, it puts societal pressure on businesses to close or modify their operations by allowing people to work from home. Many families are simply not setup to have kids at home, but parents at work, so factoring that in will cause businesses to change.
Most importantly, all this happens without government directly intervening in business decisions.
Secondly, it lays the groundwork for politicians to take more drastic actions. If schools remain open, even if it makes sense by “the numbers”, it’s still going to be politically difficult to cancel events, restrict general travel, and eventually close businesses. The public sees school closures as step 1 in any disaster situation. You can’t discount the importance of emotional signaling.
And medical staff needs to stay home and take care of the kids too?
This is incorrect. Italy closed borders on Jan 31st. The Chinese visitor to the Webasto company meeting came to Germany on Jan 19th.
It is easily evident that Germany closing its borders at the same time as Italy would not have prevented this transmission. You should probably increase your skepticism about the media where you read this.
In other words, the government probably realizes that despite the grim reality, their POV may be that the virus will have a net positive effect on the economy and also accommodation affordability for the younger generation.
Stressing systems like that is far more damaging/costly than managing the situation with care. Even if the death toll for the elderly explodes, there will be far more more old people requiring intensive care over time. Don't look at the death tool only, the coronavirus does not "kill clean".
Sources:
https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/bundestags... (Zweitstimmenergebnis)
https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/parteien-in-deutschla...
When gatherings of people started to be canceled all around the world, the government kept going ahead with the plans because this is a key event for their agenda.
The very next day, they acknowledged that the virus is out of control in several regions in Spain, started to take very aggressive measures that are only increasing each day.
Today, it has been announced that Irene Montero, head of the women rights ministry, that lead the main protest that day, has tested positive for coronavirus.
Stupidity at its finest
It's a simple projection from voter space to elected space. As a former pol.sci. student/researcher, I've grown disillusioned by the fact that representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended — the projection is flawed with regards to the conduct of affairs.
I don't know why:
- might be that voting is skewed by marketing (permanent campaign) money, government is too corrupt and establishment too entrenched, the "conspiracy hidden in plain sight / normalcy" idea;
- could be that democracy simply doesn't work as a system, or maybe not anymore, because the "average" is somehow not good enough — that was certainly not my belief, not for a decade, but I had to come to terms: it's a question worth asking, I assure you. Just considering the quality of information and the noise/signal ratio throws a huge wrench in the mechanics of any sane decision-making process...
- ... (many more hypotheses)
Regardless, this may help us craft the next-new-better political system, which might or might not be a regime of increased freedom compared to now (my guess: much more in some domains, much less in others, and not everyone will like the distribution).
I mean, look where we are. We had 15 years to get ready for such an event since coronavirus of the 2000's — tons of reports and words of good will. “Guys, we're not ready for a massive outbreak!” — everybody and their Bill Gates said so! But alas, the political fantasy kept going and it's all been just words. It wasn't that hard to stockpile masks and various supplies for when the day comes...
It's a sad day in history when we must face the consequences of our choices, but it's like a cycle... We get too complacent and something slams us, again and again and again (give it 3-4 generations apart to "forget", it's as if written language doesn't exist).
I'm jaded at the irony of our collective behavior, and sad for all those who will suffer and leave. Hopefully this will be a painful but learning experience that will last. I'm sad to report that it almost exclusively takes real pain, real hurt for societies to learn anything meaningfully in the face of history, of evolution. So, here we are, destiny.
What is your solution, almost all dictators are not benevolent.
Look, I won't pretend having "the" solution because it doesn't exist until we actually implement something, then iterate our way into a more-or-less final form that works. That's how we went from absolute monarchy to representative democracy, but if you trace the roots of that process, you've got a solid century of experimentation and much, much thinking (pretty much all the great names you know from 15th-16th-17th century were on some side of that equation, informed the discussion and ultimate "object", regime, that appeared).
So what will it be? Well I could write some anticipation sci-fi to suggest possibilities that are non-dystopian (well, not so much that it's unbearable) and come with a ton of benefits, and obviously some drawbacks / limits / undesirable side effects to be managed, adjusted.
The question is what the political will of the People actually wants— it's a question we each have to answer for ourselves —and what is possible, without breaking the machine, what will be desired, refused or simply ignored by 'elites' who, like it or not, have the fuel to make-or-break such 'evolution'. Now add an 'r' to the word and you increase the range of possibilities, but risk as well.
Here is my personal feeling: I think such events as COVID-19 will spark the kind of seed that eventually grows to fundamental political change; I however think we're still half a generation away from that — give time for Millenials 1982-1999 to rise to power, as they have the right mix of "values" (philosophy, circumstantial world experience / view, etc) to move beyond the systems that govern us today — and have for 70 ±10 years already!
I had a hunch post 9/11 that this century would see regimes evolve either towards more political freedom (towards more direct democracy) or towards a more authoritarian form of society (wherein social peace is obtained at the cost of some freedoms). It turns out that I was wrong, it wasn't either/or but both combined in a weird way: political freedom was gained but used to promote clowns to power (#all.over.the.world.the.2010s.are.insane.historically) instead of e.g. tackling massive, pressing or idealistic projects (people be lazy, rite). Whereas actual sovereignty (the one you learn in constitutional law, the real kind of political power) definitely shifted towards authoritarianism under various disguises — populism is one form, China's and Russia's "restoration" of authoritarian federal powers is another, and some self-proclaimed SWJs may not be far either, in their own "inclusive" way (kinda like dictatures are all "Democratic Republic").
What this tells me (I've long studied that evolution but again it's really just my personal view) is that societies are simply not mature for the new "space of possibilities" (think positive variables, opportunities e.g. via tech, think also negative variables, constrains of climate and viruses for instance). It's just too much power, too early, so we basically just F it up like kids with a problem a tad too big for them.
But that's history. We do things and then we figure out how to deal with them, there's no reversing that causality. Hopefully we won't ravage ourselves and this Earth in the 20-60 years it'll take to adapt to this rather sudden paradigm change — think 1980-today, that's just 40 years ffs, and think of the mindset then and now... And you kinda need "natives" of an era to meaningfully internalize its reality, process the whole damn thing in "system 1" like human beings do, and eventually sometime between 20 and 80 figure out ways to make life better. Rinse and repeat with their newborn grand-children to solve the new thing that's arrived by then.
As for what that will actually look like, your guess is as good as mine. I'm partial to freedom personally, but I think it's worth choosing your battles, too. That's when it becomes political thus where we stop: a good regime doesn't favor "opinions" but rather the expression thereof, in a healthy and productive manner (able to reach decision; ideally promoting some degree of consensus, kept in check by some other legitimated power, etc).
Just know that, when we want to, it's relatively doable to write a rather good constitution (and we have, many times throughout the last century). The real tricky issue is not to technically implement the ideas, the hard part is what ideas, what system you actually want to create. Again, many possibilities, some of which were abandoned by history but are now possible because modern tech (notably complex voting systems that yield much better representation of opinions and hierarchies in complex, multi-dimensional systems, e.g. to distribute might and resources between cities, or agencies, or any such module. There's about 1 century of great science that we're barely using for the benefit of the public, troves of innovation in the political realm. Just so much apathy for change in those who man these offices).
(It's honestly a fascinating topic of inquiry if you like systems, puzzles, cybernetics (different name for systems theory), all things mechanical in nature that must work with a "real-world" chaotic human environment.)
The public at large are terrible bosses. We're disengaged and bad at measuring what our employees (leaders) do, so style trumps substance and it's hard for us to tell if any of them have a measurable impact.
We have little ability to get to the truth of what's going on and are deliberately dissuaded from this with huge omnibus bills and whatnot. News has become about narratives instead of substance, with hardly anyone caring to look at the underlying evidence of anything, letting liars get away with so much.
We constantly raise standards with no way of enforcing them. Naturally, cheating is the only way to appear perfect, driving out very good but imperfect people in favor of massive liars who cheat. We're also not good at holding anyone in politics to account. Everyone knows that Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself, but only some low level guards will be held to account for it most likely. The general public has no idea what to do and the leaders are too happy to sweep it under the rug.
So you're probably right, we have the leaders we deserve in some sense. The general public makes for terrible bosses, which is probably why too many people work under bad ones.
- events with more than 100 people forbidden.
- all schools will close
- all non-critical employees must stay home.
- all private employees off-job as much as possible.
- stay in your home.
- don't travel to [many] countries, more restricts will come.
- All indoor cultural institutions, libraries, leisure facilities, etc. are closed.
And today they made a temporary law which will sunset 1 year from now (the law is only in effect for 1 year):
- ability to force people to be tested and put into isolation
- enter homes without warrant when occupant is suspected to be infected.
- much expanded ability to forbid events and collection of people (Note: the permission to assemble is just as fundamental culturally to Danish people as freedom-of-speech is to USA).
- ability to forbid/restrict use of transportation (likely number of passengers in buses, trains)
- suspension of "free choice" of hospitals and quarantee of treatment within some time frame (we have "socialized medicin" where we have a right to treatment within a given time frame)
- allow temporary suspension of other laws if deemed necessary
Why did this happend now: They were told yesterday that Northern Italy no longer has enough resources in their health care system and that there are now official guidelines for whom to treat and whom to let die: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-h...
Italy is close and "one of us".
http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/tmp/covid-eu-norm2.png
This is actual case data, plotted with the time offsets shown in the key.
No other country had a ramp-up like that. Right now, Denmark is 5-6 days behind Italy in terms of cases per million inhabitants, and the incubation period is about that time. Really pleased to see some quick decision making on the part of the Danish government.
> events with more than 100 people forbidden.
Which still allows rapid infections of relatively large groups of people.
In Italy you can't even walk outside without a valid reason (buying groceries, medical emergency, solo exercising).
Culturally, freedom of assembly is, if anything, MORE significant for Americans than freedom of speech, it’s just not relevant to Internet forums, so you don’t hear it much discussed online.
Neither right is absolute.
I would go a step further and argue it is much more significant to American culture than Danish, and I feel my opinion carries at least some weight given I am a Danish person living in California.
I was trying to avoid making a comparative statement about the importance of freedom of assembly between cultures; I have no idea if freedom of assembly is important to Danish people!
But I suspect I obscured my meaning by trying to avoid making a statement about people I don't know.
The Dutch government keeps schools open. They say closing schools would also force many parents to stay at home and that many of them are much needed in health care, police etc..
Get appendicitis? Routine surgery, can be done in a few hours. And will definitely kill you without treatment. Break a bone? Car crash? Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support.
The cost of overburdening the healthcare system is not some calculation of a nuisance amount of citizen death over a time period - it's a whole bunch of people who otherwise live full and productive lives, instead stop existing.
What happens when you go above that dotted line is not the continuation of a predictable trend, it is a chaotic bifurcation in behavior which does not have predictable secondary effects. The COVID-19 case load follows that shape. The deaths and long-term health problems do not.
This has been my standard reply to the "It's just a flu" concept for some time now.
Aside from all this, it's incredible how difficult it is for people to think about this using all the info available (long onset of symptoms, asymptomatic spread, high % of hospitalizations / intensive care, etc) plus thinking in the long term.
I know the generalized idea is no face masks if you don't have symptoms, but if we all used them it might have a good effect on curving the spread.
Unfortunately, western cultures associate face mask with sickness, and are frowned upon.
Those are basic precautions that depend only on the availability of soap. Face masks need to be worn properly to work, and in cultures where people don't wear them normally this is an issue. Only medical staff really has a valid use for face masks now, also because of limited availability.
But clearly this is not insurmountable.
There was never enough for everybody. So second best option is, known infected + healthcare. Health professionals work under heavy viral load, which is positively correlated with your chance of getting sick and having a bad outcome. Which means in an overloaded healthcare system without adequate amounts of PPE (like Italy now), doctors will be dying, even if they were young and otherwise healthy. And dying doctors drops the system capacity too.
(Capacity of most healthcare systems seems to be limited by the amount of beds and ventilators available, but these you can always make - and China is indeed making them full-steam, to help the rest of the world. You can't make new doctors that quickly, and there isn't much of them either.)
They aren't very effective and people who use them tend to touch their face a lot more. Not a good idea - unless you are infected.
If you are an expert in anything watching this play out everyday has become a gigantic nuisance and a distraction. Not because it matters what the herd is debating but because of the effect it has on leaders, decision makers etc. It piles pressure on them to waste time/resources/energy reacting to the herd.
Even with the info explosion the educated herd is as dumb as it has ever been, probably dumber, for the simple fact there is always more info than whatever you hear on the news or can read up in 2 weeks.
As if the educated herd made a diff to the election of Trump or Brexit. Some people argue the response is evolving with each crisis. I haven't seen any evidence of that.
I took his point to be simply that flattening the curve does itself have significant associated costs. That a maximally flattened curve is not necessarily the best approach.
For people who rely on public transport to get to work and who can't work remotely, I think they would argue that the cost / day of flattening efforts itself also begins to rise significantly. That is, the first week or two are less impactful than subsequent consecutive weeks. And that cost is borne widely. That increasing cost may or may not balance out the failure to have the cost axis take into account the height of the curve.
However, this guy (who, by the way, is just a developer who has given "a few days of thought" to this issue) does not seem to know anything about this issue but still proposes a conspiranoic theory that HN entertains way too much.
And it’s not just an abstract “economic” cost on the X-axis, ultimately it also comes back down to quality of life and even a cost in lives. Actual people losing their businesses, losing their houses, etc.
I can’t help but think of Asimov and Three Laws. Taken to its extreme, robots interpret the law of “not allowing humans to come to harm” in a way that they ultimately enslave humanity.
First, I think the nCFR is fundamentally and significantly overstating the risk to the general population because orders or magnitude more people already have it than have been tested positive. Second, I think the treatment for COVID is pretty basic. With a concerted effort to deploy temporary facilities across the US we could add sufficient ventilator beds for a quick peak in cases and save trillions of dollars in economic damages.
(Then again, my government isn't the Belgian government.)
In the US, a lot of the action is at the state level, and WA, for example, seems to be doing fine.
The federal response, and especially the testing situation, is complete amateur-hour bordering on negligence-in-the-criminal-sense, yes.
I'm in Spain, one of the countries that is doing way too little, way too late. When I see the measures and statements from our politicians, I don't see a machiavellian plan, I see stupidity. In fact, a prominent member of the government has been infected after attending feminist demonstrations on March 8 that anyone reasonably informed and intelligent knew shouldn't have been held in the first place, others also attended and could follow. If they were such diabolical masterminds, I doubt they would have done that...
To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly. For example, in the UK austerity is blamed for tens of thousands of deaths (some people say 130,000, others 30,000). The unpalatable fact is that trade-offs need to be made when deciding how to tackle this.
In the case of covid-19 I don't envy anyone who has to make these decisions, due to the exponential nature of infection spread making small changes in measures potentially have big results. We are all in uncharted territory. Hopefully the examples of countries such as Italy will help decision makers get it right, or perhaps more importantly will influence peoples' behaviour to reduce transmission.
Also, I think he's wrong about the Y axis equalling "deaths" - the point is to keep cases manageable by the health system, which minimises deaths. Dragging things out doesn't necessarily improve outcomes for at-risk people.
This is also the main argument against taking dramatic action to combat climate change.
Don't read some Belgian web developer's web log.
Read the likes of Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease: Workshop Summary published by the National Academies Press in 2007 (ISBN 9780309107693 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54167/).
Read “Destroyer and Teacher”: Managing the Masses During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic (Nancy Tomes. Public Health Rep. 2010. 125(Suppl 3) 48–62. PMC2862334. PMID 20568568. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00333549101250S308 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862334/)
Tomes is particularly enlightening on the internal conflicts between government public heath departments.
Second: Flattening the curve isn't about shortening any duration.
The Y axis is the number of infected.
In the Red Line scenario, like packets overflowing a buffer, patients above the dashed line will (have to) be medically neglected. Rest assured, our immune system will eventually gain the upper hand, the virus will eventually decides its job done, red line settles, we'll congratulate the lucky few who won scarce beds at surviving hospitals, as well as those who treated themselves next to remains of deceased hospital staffs. Then we will assemble at rubble of our cities and start walking towards the former glory of human civilization up until 2020(hyper exaggeration).
The Blue Line, "Flattening the curve", lets us avoid that apocalyptic situation: by boldly suppressing infection early on and spreading it out to a longer duration, ignoring economical disaster ensuing, no patient will be left behind. The hope is that by allowing every patients to be semi-adequately treated WHEN infected(not IF infected), total population of alive and recovered combined at the end of this pandemic at maybe late 2022 or so is going to be far better than the Red Line scenario. So we'd want to flatten the curve.
Green, is just a pipe dream. Makes no sense. If that's possible we might as well get production back up full over in China.
I think there's an important, sub-vocally communicated notion: the containment had failed long ago, and there is an ongoing pandemic. Many stays asymptomatic, some experience manageable illness, some would need to stay at ICUs, around 0.5-1% life will be lost, but we will all(~70%) get infected. Ideas that requires or aims at containing infection or isolating infected few are useless. We must all accept that almost all of us are situationally required to "schedule" an infection, and fortunately, exact time, place or severity of it is left to our discretion.
We must be aware of these facts, and must use it to our maximum advantage, starting from washing hands often.
I’m in Latin America where it isn’t spreading as fast (my best guess is warm weather), and I’m planning to wait it out until it’s warmer in the northern hemisphere or a vaccine comes out.
https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237781162153717760
These are not strictly predictions, but they give some idea of what will happen if we act in a similar way to Italy. Note that there's a 6 to 10 day lag in the stats (~6 days incubation, up to 4 days testing, at least in the UK right now). Without isolation measures, we're seeing 33% per day increase rates. If we wait until we can measure the scale of the problem, it's likely to be too late to prevent it.
Take Climate Change. There’s no shortage of brilliant scientists who have warned us of the long term costs (in human toll and wealth) of inaction. Yet we wait.
Unfortunately, scientists are not the ones flying the plane, so to speak. There are brilliant epidemiologists here in the United States. What are their recommendations behind closed doors? Classified. We don’t know. We do know the opinions of the ones who are free to speak their minds, and they have been warning us to be proactive. For years, before this crisis, actually.
The rest of us are sitting in the back of the plane, uncomfortably contemplating whether the pilots have perhaps made a fatal error in their judgement. It happens. Now we wait.
To quote Carl Sagan:
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness“
That's because Belgium has no government to put sanctions into place.
And the federal government has said that indoor meetings with more than 1000 persons are "not recommended". The Brussels government has cancelled those, the Walloon cities don't have events of more than 1000 persons planned in the near future, and the Antwerp government seems to be using the whole thing as an opportunity to criticize and reject any responsibility on the federal government without taking any decision (as far as I know, the Simple Minds concert hasn't been cancelled yet, and is supposed to have a lot more than 1000 people).
There are actually a lot of governments which each have the power to do things. I personally think that the only reason they don't do anything useful is pure incompetence, irresponsibility and political calculations.
Really? Because I seem to have read that budget deficit is getting out of hand because there is no federal government to fix it.
Also, yeah, fair enough. There are a handful of other governments that technically could take a decision, but as you said: it's easy to say: "well, this is a federal decision, so we won't do anything".
But the coronavirus crisis is definitely a current affair, and the current government has free reign to do anything it deems necessary about it.
Belgium has a pretty divided population (Wallonia/Flanders) and no winner-takes-all election system, and so there's often a stalemate where no majorities can be reached for any votes, including for electing the government officials).
Because we want to avoid Covid-19 becoming a recurrent winter illness like other coughs and colds and flu. Those already cause considerable pressure on healthcare systems, and adding annual covid-19 season on top would be pretty rough.
You see that playing out when measures on one level (most prominently medical advise) are not in line with broader approaches to managing events, groups, tourism and travel. We all notice the disconnect, and some might think of 'dark conspiracies'. There are none (rule of the most kind interpretation). It's the dispersion of institutions in action.
Another one is my assertion, as a former public servant with friends in places that /should know/, that there is no structured economic analysis of possible outcomes of various scenarios of intervention. There are no models, there is no time, there is not enough collaboration between agencies. On the one hand you have the medical staff and agencies doing what they can where they can on a medical level, on the other hand you have bureaucrats making decisions with limited information and way more limited understanding. Politicians probably get in the way more than they support.
My thought: Governments are acting. They are just not acting in a way that we, the public, can understand is internally consistent. That's because the acts aren't internally consistent. That is due to the fact that governement is made up of institutions with different levels of understanding, information, scope and time to act.
In a pandemic, this is all very unfortunate and a more singlehanded style of governement could help. China got it quite right after an initial denial. Nobody in the West is equipped to both think about and act on China-style measures. In normal situation our distributed model of application of knowledge (Hayek) is more efficient. Most we can hope for is rapid learning in our institutions and the fact that a whole lot of capital, both human and monetary, is available for solving this crisis.
I'm quite in a shock (my province is in partial quarantine) with what's happening, but if the world economy proofs resiliant to this shock on a say 2-yr horizon, I'm quite bullish on how strong and adaptable our institutions are and see more hope for f.e. tackling climate change than before.
This pandemic started because too many people are living together in close proximity, eeking out a living by literally catching and eating any living thing they can.
The economic effects are due to an unforgiving system that takes pride in an 'eat what you kill' culture and a 'winner take all' model of enterprise. As a consequence, there are a LOT of businesses running on thin margins and making just enough to cover costs each month.
Even one month of things going to zero will ruin a whole host of restaurants, sole proprietors, real estate speculators, and on down the chain. I hope I'm wrong, but this kind of instant systematic reduction in the economy feels unprecedented within the last 50+ years.
There are so many knock on effects of all this - people will be unemployed with limited opportunities at best. They'll potentially lose their healthcare, and in the worst cases their homes. Schools are closing around the country, and they won't have lunch programs running which means a lot of kids are likely to go without adequate food.
We need to fix (or create) safety nets in our country (and indeed the world), so when things like this happen we can all chip in to cover each other. Basic healthcare, affordable or public housing, eviction protections, food programs. These aren't radical ideas, these are the only way forward.
Surely, cost is the area under the curve of the original graph. Massive strain on our systems doesn’t come for free.
Even the graph in the article is weird, why is there a sharp limit at max capacity in the T2 curve? the virus doesn't care about max capacity....
The intuitive impulse is there (trade off hospitals getting "creamed" vs. shutting down economy), but the implementation isn't realistic, so with the incubation period and lag in testing, all governments act too late. It's an impossible control problem.
On the other hand, maybe the right time to act is to watch your stock market. It's a forward predictor. When it starts to tank, go all out.
https://www.onvista.de/etf/VANGUARD-FTSE-ALL-WORLD-UCITS-ETF...
Governments don't seem to be able to act based on non-local information. Once the hospitals fill up _here_ , then action is taken. Hospitals filling up somewhere else causes no action.
There appears to be concerted disinformation operation underway, using the same outlets used for politics. I live in a "red" part of the US and can see comments from people on local TV news posts, and I talk to other local people. It's pretty clear there is lots of false information being propagated: comments like "Media stop overblowing this", "it's just the flu", "we can still shake hands here, it's a long way away" (that was a teacher at last night's parent teacher meetings). If the population don't have a realistic view of the situation then how can government take the necessary steps?
You can't just change the axis labels because the death ratio depends non-linearly on infection ratio above the threshold.
Are we willing to take the risk when we don't know the consequences?
He just relabelled the curves for no apparent reason!
To make it clear: The vertical axis should not be number of deaths. While the number infected remains below the health system capacity the number of deaths should remain relatively low. But once it hits capacity there is a step function that ratchets it up.
And the horizontal axis isn't cost at all. The green line shows something that is within the normal capacity of the health system. There aren't additional costs and so should be relatively cheap.
And the green curve is great - everyone would like that - that's the normal Flu. The Blue curve is the maximum we can sustain without overwhelming the health system.
New York City declared a state of emergency first, then the state. I guess the U.S. is in a state of emergency because it is shutting down flights. For a while people were accusing WHO of inaction, finally WHO declares a pandemic and they start accusing other people of inaction.
The structure is that an outbreak creates a crisis in one spot even though others are currently unaffected.
But I agree, everything's fine in Belgium :D. The virus is likely to have taken a detour to avoid Belgium, like the Chernobyl cloud did.
Disregard the wishful thinking, psychopath level lack of empathy and poor graphing. The problem with this is the lack of any actual model or incorporation of any variables that disagree with it. Things like confidence, certainty, the value of all those parents & grandparents.
I'm chalking this one down to ostrich syndrome.
Which might also explain why countries act differently, the max threshold for the respective medical system is different. As are projections of the spread. But I don't think we have to believe governments aren't analyzing the development daily at least.
The actions they are taking are based on what they feel will serve them best.
This should be the first assumption in the analysis.
Which would be how a company think, I'm pretty sure governments don't think like that
Most presidents want to be elected at the next election and this is probably the main thing they are trying to optimize right now
Let me be extremely cynical (at risk of down-voting) about the current US administration's motives:
Consider Trump's just-announced travel ban on the EU-26. It misses out the UK and Ireland, despite COVID-19 having a toe-hold in those countries ... but the UK and Ireland have Trump-branded golf courses! A ban on travel from UK and IE would hurt their viability, so it was quietly omitted.
Meanwhile, the Trump hotel chain is being hit as badly as anyone else in the hospitality trade by fears of a pandemic, and revenue of his hotels in Florida is driven by spring break traffic. So he's downplaying anything that might reduce vacation travel at spring break.
Denying that COVID-19 is anything to worry about is personally advantageous for Donald Trump as a hotel magnate, because it protects his investments. It's disadvantageous for the USA as a whole, but where do his priorities lie?
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-ou...
Honestly should of just said, all air travel. How the thing spread to other countries in the first place.
Still, I'd be supprised if London don't end up with quarantine zones before the month is up. Going by how it has patterned in countries that have had to move from containment onto delay. Then it's not a case of if, but when.
Does appear that the transition from containment into delay has just started.
We need to start the national quarantine before things blow up to Italy and Wuhan level proportions. Yes, it will be extremely costly. But riding on imaginary hopes that the virus will just disappear for no real reason is extraordinarily irresponsible.
The details of what it looks like will take time to figure out--it will be a complicated collaboration between the federal, state, and local authorities, with the justice system and health sectors being deeply involved. That's reason to start figuring those details out now, and not two weeks from now.
Donald Trump was elected because he said he was a risk taker willing to do what needs to be done despite criticism from everyone. A national quarantine is needed now, and we need bold action to get it started. This is his moment to make a difference.
Hospitals will only allow visitors if they are over 16 and a primary caregiver (ie spouse), and even they are screened before being allowed in. Nursing homes are limiting visitors, both who can come, and where they can go. Companies are halting non-essential travel.
It isn't as drastic as you might think it should be, but it is significant at limiting risk for the most vulnerable.
Most of the above is running plans that have been in place for a long time (far longer than Trump), walking the line between overreacting and things getting out of control.
The deaths are the cover they need, so action will come in the next few weeks.
> Why your government isn't acting on the Corona/COVID-19 threat
Maybe we could correct this weird Indian grammar seen in the current headline on HN?
Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
This kind of delusional thinking is not very different from religion and believing in God. People who believe in God, when they are found in hard situations, will think that somehow god (the savior) will come for their rescue. Apparently, people who do not believe in God will think that somehow the universe/government or whatever will come to their rescue.
The issue is that people holding power/government seems to be, eh, usual folks. They are still operating with a normal brain which when confronted with abnormal situations that it can't handle will just imagine that stuff is going to return to normal.
Bill Gates has already warned about something close to the Coronavirus and that we are very far from being ready. Nobody was listening and my guess is the change is going to happen through natural selection.
1) Test kits are not helpful because of their high false positive rates.
2) The goal of these activities is to slow the spread, because it is not possible to stop.
3) Slowing the spread gives vaccine developers more time
- He describes this as more like a "winter" than a "blizzard" in that this is going to go on for months;
- No one really knows what the mortality rate is but it's become clear there are certain risk factors eg the fatality rate among people over 70 in China is about 3x for men than women but men are much more likely to smoke than women in China in this age group.
- Keeping schools closed is a mixed bag. For one, kids below 9 or so don't seem to get sick or die. In China only 2% of cases are under age 19. There are other diseases like this (eg Hepatitis-A). If you keep kids home, some people will lose their jobs or simply be unable to work as they take care of those children. Some of those people will be health care professionals. The lack of those will likely kill people;
- It's unclear yet what other risk factors (other than age and smoking) there are. Obesity in the developed world is a big cause for concern as this unfolds. A stat quoted is that 45% of people in the US aged 45 and older are obese or severely obese;
- It's largely a question of when not if you'll get this;
- It's a myth that we'll have a vaccine before ~18 months. You can't rush this. It's like trying to rush a pregnancy.
- Italy is a window to how most places will be in ~3 weeks;
- We, as a society, have a short attention span. We could've developed a vaccine for coronaviruses after previous outbreaks (SARS/MERS) but there seemed to be no appetite for that when they faded;
- Disruptions to the supply chain are likely to be the biggest problem. We don't stockpile anything and we're dependent on China for a lot of medical equipment (eg respirators) and a bunch of essential medicines, some of which people will die if they don't receive.
The guest here (Michael Osterholm) is an expert on infectious diseases and the author of Deadliest Enemies [2].
I can't speak to the reaction of different governments. It's no surprise there's variance. This probably comes down to just 1 or 2 personalities.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Enemy-Against-Killer-Germs-...
Would it though?
Honestly, I am really surprised that this post is being upvoted at all. Empty speculation for no reason at all.
It's also very wrong, as it depends on what measures are required for each curve, and as it seems clear, this guy does not seem to know the possible measures at hand, their feasibility and effectiveness.
By inventing a completely unsupported rationalization/conspiracy theory?
"Ruling elites" are not omnipotent, and paradoxically most are in the most vulnerable demographic. And as others said, it is a situation where one can be damned regardless of which way they act.
In the case of strong containment/quarantines, unless you're willing to completely close the borders indefinitely at this point it is futile doing maximum containment: it's past the point where you can stop it, as the world managed to do with SARS and MERS.
At this point every government is vulnerable to every other government, and further vulnerable to the possibility that there are super-carriers spreading it. And FWIW, a number of countries have a done a very good job of managing it, but again it isn't a closed-loop.
A very cruel view on humanity, but I would be surprised if these thoughts hadn't crossed our politicians minds.
Also, many initiatives by young people (e.g. limiting climate change, re-structuring society to be more equal-opportunity) are being blocked by old people who wish to preserve the status quo. So there is a general dislike by young people - those mostly unaffected by Covid - against the elderly - those most likely to die from Covid.
And for many years, there have been heated discussions about whether it is fair to force an ever smaller number of young people to pay for an ever growing number of old people, even if those old people directly undermine the young people's livelihood, for example by driving up rental prices or by voting to stop free education (which they themselves benefited from, when young).
So you could probably even win some young votes with a platform of "let's sacrifice the unneeded grumpy grandmas for the greater good".
As for the reasons of why there is a divide between young and old, I guess a big part is jealousy, because the older generations had more stable job opportunities available to them.
https://qz.com/940686/millennials-and-baby-boomers-have-been...