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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Some countries did seriously try contact tracing for COVID-19 and it was generally a waste of resources. Most contact tracing programs have now been discontinued or scaled back. China is still doing it, but their approach requires an authoritarian surveillance state which is far worse than any virus.

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There's also the difference in transmissibility between the original virus and the later variants. Contact tracing something with an R0 of 5 is a different matter than tracing one of 15.

Can confirm. Whatever the success of other public health measures in NZ, contact tracing was insanely high cost if done manually (and spinning up new contact tracers was much harder than it sounds). The Bluetooth and "scan here" tech solutions never seemed to get widespread adoption by users, and for a reason I've never heard explained, seemed rarely used by the health administration.

>an authoritarian surveillance state which is far worse than any virus

I'd take any authoritarian state over ebola, thank you very much.

The irony of seeing this reply in a thread started with hope for "renewed appreciation for the second-order, systemic, and unintended consequences of any action" is darkly comic.

The first-order effect of ebola is (almost) certain death. No need to consider anything of higher order.

The fatality rate for ebola is around 50%.

https://www.paho.org/en/topics/ebola-virus-disease

Even at that rate, I would rather take my chances with ebola than live under a communist regime.

https://victimsofcommunism.org/

It's not, it's about a coinflip (as the sibling reply noted). But you're making a very salient point about the ease at which higher order thinking can be shut down en masse in a population through fear.

Is there an authoritarian government in the history of humanity that managed to kill 50% of its population? What's the average?

Yes, there are situations in which "higher order thinking" doesn't matter.

>Is there an authoritarian government in the history of humanity that managed to kill 50% of its population?

That's the sort of higher-order question you'll be able to find out right after the magical Ebola wave, if you embrace authoritarianism.

Got it, "higher-order thinking" is the new reincarnation of "doing your own research". Not that surprising, actually.

In that both are exemplary qualities, only talked down by people who — by laziness or ulterior motive — would rather see them outsourced?

No, in that both are usually repeated by clueless charlatans.

Not sure if the risk/benefits analysis is that simple, because the risk/benefits evolve over time. At the beginning of a pandemic it is definitely beneficial, but it changes when either spread is too high, or other measures (vaccines, therapeutics) become available. This is evidenced by the fact that contract tracing continues e.g. for monkey pox.

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