[FRIAM] the end of the pandemic

Mon May 11 17:36:30 EDT 2020

Ok, a little clarification is in order. Quito is about 50 miles away, but
I'm not allowed to drive there (travel is extremely controlled right now).
Where I can shop is only about 15 miles away, but I can only drive on
Fridays, from 5am until 2pm. From 2pm until the following day at 5am is a
nationwide curfew. Ecuador is in deep trouble, with on the order of 60-70
billion dollars of foreign debt, dependent on export of historically
low-priced petroleum and bananas. Since the country switched to the US
dollar in 2000, they can't simply print more money like some countries I
could name. Good to avoid hyper-inflation, but how to keep essential
services running? President Moreno's popularity is somewhere around 8%
right now if I remember correctly. Despite all this, supplies of essentials
(food, fuel) have not dried up - I don't know how. IMF just approved an
additional $1.4 billion loan to tide the country over, but how long will
that last? There are over 100 cantons in the country, and they are each
allowed to decide which of three states to be in: red (most restrictive
lockdown), yellow (considerable relaxing of restrictions), or green (fewest
restrictions). Only three chose to stay move from red to yellow this week,
the rest staying in red. I could go on and on, I just don't know how it's
all going to turn out. Despite all this, I strangely feel safer here in the
middle of my 100 acres of cloud forest than if I were in the USA.

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 3:13 PM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> Gary -
>
> I'd find it interesting and informative if not directly actionable to know
> more about how things are there in Ecuador.
>
> I'm surprised that you are as far from groceries as 50 miles?  I was
> thinking you were living closer to a major city (Quito?) but nevertheless
> semi-rural?   Are there no smaller markets open closer to you, or do you
> prefer to shop (only) at the larger markets (limiting yourself to 1
> trip)?   What are the infection rates there and do you have a feeling for
> where the biggest risks are for the population?
>
> I track a few "instagrammer types" who were traveling in self-contained
> van/camper setups around the world when this hit.   One has returned from
> their trek from Utah down to Tierra del Fuego (and back), finally giving up
> and returning from the Uraguayan border of Argentina by airline, leaving
> their van in storage there.   The other couple had already bought a small
> piece of land and parked their converted short-bus there permanently when
> this hit and have been reporting nearly daily as they cope with the
> shutdowns there.   Others were in Morocco (now one in Canada and the others
> in Croatia and another back in the UK).   Each one has their own
> idiosyncratic view of the whole experience, but the bottom line I'm sensing
> is that those countries (and the ones some had to travel through) are MUCH
> more draconian in their rules than the US is, for better or worse.
>
> Maybe this pandemic is an illusion created and maintained by "the liberal
> elite", but if it is their reach is a great deal more expansive than I
> could have imagined.
>
> My 22 year old nephew in Tucson was just released from his (self)
> quarantine.  His earliest symptoms came on at the end of March but he was
> unable to get a doctor's appointment or a (subsequent) test, just the phone
> recommendations to "stay home to avoid infecting anyone) and some general
> information about what symptoms to treat as worthy of an emergency hospital
> visit.   He didn't have overtly corona-exclusive symptoms until about 2
> weeks in, when his smell and taste were severely compromised.   He is still
> having mild fatigue and shortness of breath, but nothing that can't be
> attributed to being (ever-more) sedentary for 6 weeks.  He's following
> social-distance and masking when leaving home, but the doctors (on the
> phone) gave him the greenlight with those restrictions.  It is a mildly
> hypochondriac family, and I know he gets extra points/dispensation for
> having been infected, but it does sound like he probably was.  He says the
> docs are not offering antigen testing, ambiguously because A) they don't
> have access; or B) they don't think it should change his future behaviour.
>
> Last night, I zoomed with that whole branch of my family (my mother, my
> only sister, her husband and their 3 adult children), all excepting the
> nephew are hard-core Fox-News watching Trump-train riders.   One niece is a
> nurse in Riverside CA, living with a Doctor.. both treating COVID19
> patients daily, though their hospital is mid-sized and has not been
> overwhelmed, specializing in taking the overflow from the smaller
> surrounding towns and running a suite of triage tents in the parking lot.
> There was no discussion of politics including NO rattling on (like they did
> 6 weeks ago) about the "Democrat Hoax".
>
> My sister is in a k-8 Montessori school and half of the staff believes
> they do not need masks or PPE (now that they are back) but my sister (with
> her son's experience) is not giving over to that idea wears a mask,
> sanitizes, and keeps her distance as best she can.  She is worried that if
> the students return (today) to that environment, that they are just asking
> to be another source of a fresh cluster of infections.   The timing is such
> that whoever is (maybe) being exposed today, should be recovering (if they
> survive) from this fresh burst of infection about the time Dave thinks the
> pandemic (aka hysteria) will subside.  It is a small school (a few hundred
> staff/teachers/students) and maybe nobody in that pool is currently
> infected, and maybe they will all avoid becoming infected during that
> period.
>
> They also acknowledged (in January) that "Climate Change is real, and
> going to cause real problems for real people, like US!", when they had been
> ardent (if polite) deniers for at least the 20 years I have put down my own
> denial/cynicism on the topic.    I have no idea who they are going to vote
> for  in November...  maybe they will just stay home (since AZ is not likely
> to eagerly embrace vote-by-mail like NM already has declared for).
>
> ramble,
>
>  - Steve
>
> On 5/11/20 11:13 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>
> I definitely will try to make it to some FRIAM Zooms. Unfortunately,
> Friday is the one day a week I am permitted to go out on the roads with my
> car here in Ecuador due to the pandemic pandemonium, and I have to drive to
> get to the only supermarket that is open within 50 miles, and it closes at
> 1:00 pm.
>
> On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 11:51 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Gary,
>>
>>
>>
>> If you join the FRIAM ZOOM … perhaps come a bit late … you will get a
>> chance to meet Glen.  NOTHIN’ he says ain’t for nothin’.  It starts at 9 am
>> Mountain; you should get an invite automatically, sometime thursday.  If
>> not, let me know.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Gary Schiltz
>> *Sent:* Monday, May 11, 2020 10:09 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam at redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the end of the pandemic
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm supposed to be a geek, but I don't understand "Tempus Dictum's
>> Discord" - sounds like some mathematical proof from the ancient Greeks.
>> Google search shows a company called Tempus Dictum, and there appears to be
>> some software called Discord, either or both of which may or may not be
>> associated with Glen and reminders. I feel so behind times and
>> technologically challenged. :-).  Channeling Nick, I supposer. [no offense
>> intended, Nick]
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 10:28 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Among the many reasons email is obsolete is the ability of other tools to
>> "pin" a post so that it's easily found later on. In principle, the Mailman
>> list page could do this. But it's comparatively awkward. Piling more into
>> the footer can play the same role, but since few posters clean up their
>> posts (e.g. deleting the repeated footer), such piling makes sifting
>> through contributions awkward, as well.
>>
>> Anyway, I'd like to "pin" this post somewhere. I think it's fantastic to
>> make such explicit predictions, similar to those experiment sites where you
>> have to submit your design for review, then conduct the experiment, then
>> submit your results:
>>
>>
>> https://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2020/04/06/filling-in-the-scientific-record-the-importance-of-negative-and-null-results/
>>
>> And it follows nicely with the (painfully slow) admission that knowledge
>> comes through failure, not success:
>> https://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2020/04/06/filling-in-the-scientific-record-the-importance-of-negative-and-null-results/
>>
>> For now, I'll simply install a reminder in Tempus Dictum's Discord to
>> come back and look at Dave's prediction in late June.
>>
>> On 5/11/20 7:42 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> > The COVID-19 pandemic will end, at least in the US, by mid-June, 2020.
>> >
>> > This assertion is premised on making a distinction between the
>> biological and the perceptual.
>> >
>> > The virus is not going away, a vaccine may or may not be found and made
>> widely available, and treatments that reduce severity and death rate may or
>> may not be soon at hand. Hot spots will continue to flare. Model-based
>> prognostications will be confirmed.  And none of this will matter.
>> >
>> > A radical shift in perception from "we're all going to die" to "I have
>> next to zero chance of severe illness or death" is reaching a tipping point
>> and a catastrophic (mathematical sense of the word) change from one to the
>> other is imminent.
>> >
>> > "Science" will quickly confirm (justify / rationalize) this shift  —
>> after all, my individual risk is 150,000 / 300,000,000 or "pretty damned
>> small."
>> >
>> > Politicians will quickly cave to this new perceptual reality and
>> socio-economic restrictions will collapse.
>> >
>> > The percentage of the population that wear masks (just one example of a
>> behavioral phenomenon) will roughly equal the number that fastidiously
>> fasten their seat belts; but this and similar behaviors will mitigate the
>> the infection/death rate.
>> >
>> > Covid will be PERCEIVED to be no worse than the flu, the death rate
>> will become "acceptable," and the current media "hysteria" will fade away.
>> >
>> > There will be a segment of the populace — mostly the affluent elderly
>> and individuals who have acquired money/influence/notoriety the past few
>> months — who will argue against these changes but their objections will be
>> quickly countered with, "why should I suffer all kinds of consequences —
>> ones you do not share — to cater to your fears or your ego?"
>> >
>> > None of the above should be interpreted as anything except a simple
>> observation / prediction.
>>
>>
>> --
>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>
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