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Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

ma.ttias.be

341–350 of 436 posts

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you suggesting exactly? Do you want them to delete "alarmist" posts? That sounds like a recipe for a total collapse in trust in public institutions.

No, just giving the top search spots to updates from WHO, followed by the national, regional and local sources. Play with the search algorythm to push the more alarmist ones further down. 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…

The WHO waited an extra month before declaring a pandemic, and US national sources are generally considered by experts to be understating the severity of the issue. What you want is the top slots to go to the experts, who are not necessarily ranked correspondingly to the hierarchy of political bodies. For example the top virologists are probably in labs and universities, not the Cabinet.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrial grade is the key word here. They have there customers, so they don't need "cheap" PR. They are specialized in chemical plants, usually professional organizations know there limits (conditions apply). Plus, the WHO and others have these models and tools as well. Plus the domain knowledge needed. Why wo don't have anything from these bodies is a different story, so.

> Plus, the WHO and others have these models and tools as well. 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. w…

“Flatten the curve” is a reference to a chart suggesting it has the most benefits if done today. I can imagine objections about the parameters of the chart or the authoritativeness of the source, but I haven’t seen anyone argue against it on those terms; the vast majority of counter arguments I’ve seen are casual dismissals that it could become so bad when things are mostly OK today.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#343
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saddest truth is perhaps that functionally, we have the leaders we deserve. 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…

> representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended What is your solution, almost all dictators are not benevolent.

That's true and I'm certainly not advocating for dictatorship. There is a vast space of possible regimes and political systems in between total freedom and total slavery, though... ;-)

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.)

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is surprising to me to. If this was Star Trek world, you'd have computational models built by experts shared and discussed the very first day, forming the very foundation of the discussion and policy around the virus. 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 thing…

That kind of tool will give you accuracy without precision. There are so many unknown assumptions involved that a model like that is going to give at most qualitatively correct results. 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 re…

We’re in a real situation where choices (or the lack thereof) will have major consequences. If the best estimate we can make is a rough one, it’s still sensible to use it as a guide for our actions.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you suggesting exactly? Do you want them to delete "alarmist" posts? That sounds like a recipe for a total collapse in trust in public institutions.

No, just giving the top search spots to updates from WHO, followed by the national, regional and local sources. Play with the search algorythm to push the more alarmist ones further down. 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…

I think it would have been terribly irresponsible to forcibly give the WHO top billing back when they were arguing nobody should restrict travel, or to suppress news of the preparations starting to take place in SV when official US authorities were universally saying it’s not a big deal.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#346
post #31

I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing. 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 ou…

> Italy, which did act in time, but still failed because their neighboring countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act

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.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#347
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted it like this: deaths are less expensive than lost productivity. This might actually hold given the groups that are the most at risk are probably least productive: the old and the infirm.

Sounds like some dystopian eugenics shit to be honest, get rid of those who no longer contribute to society. I for one am working towards my old age, I'd hate to be left to just die.

It is worse than that - a dystopia is a result of humanity's folly. It being favored is a sad inherent result of "evolutionary" systems where it isn't what is more than what is morally right or wrong much less optimal. It rests upon one dumb tautology: All other things equal things which perpetuate spread more than things that do not. The process while producing quite a bit of emergent complexity is fundamentally dumb.

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.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#348
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also depends on the country's government. 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"

Japan has the same limitation, but the government put out a "strong recommendation" for schools to close and all the local governments complied.

Japan has a different culture. When the government puts out a "strong recommendation", the society generally follows. This even happens with corporations. There's a culture of conformity there that just isn't present in western nations.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just giving the top search spots to updates from WHO, followed by the national, regional and local sources. Play with the search algorythm to push the more alarmist ones further down. 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…

The WHO waited an extra month before declaring a pandemic, and US national sources are generally considered by experts to be understating the severity of the issue. What you want is the top slots to go to the experts, who are not necessarily ranked correspondingly to the hierarchy of political bodies. For example the top virologists are probably in labs and universities, not the Cabinet.

That's why I didn't inlcude the cabinets, did I? Just in Germany, the relvant data comes from the WHO (global picture), Robert Koch Institut (national), state health ministries (regional) and community health authorities (locally). All are relevant, the international numbers show the large picture, inlcuding the declining cases in China. The national ones provide more detailed insights into the country in question, while the regional and local ones are the most actionable for you. Which schools are closed, which policies are in place and whay. Stuff like that.

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.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO waited an extra month before declaring a pandemic, and US national sources are generally considered by experts to be understating the severity of the issue. What you want is the top slots to go to the experts, who are not necessarily ranked correspondingly to the hierarchy of political bodies. For example the top virologists are probably in labs and universities, not the Cabinet.

That's why I didn't inlcude the cabinets, did I? Just in Germany, the relvant data comes from the WHO (global picture), Robert Koch Institut (national), state health ministries (regional) and community health authorities (locally). All are relevant, the international numbers show the large picture, inlcuding the declining cases in China. The national ones provide more detailed insights into the country in question, w…

>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.

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