[FRIAM] the end of the pandemic

[Prof David West]

Grumpy Nick said: "Neither are we going to go back to the way we were, nor are we going to remain in lock down mode. We ARE going to do something in the middle. What is that thing going to be?"

There are ways of thinking about "what that thing is going to be," but I am extremely pessimistic that they will be employed.

davew


On Mon, May 11, 2020, at 11:38 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> While we are all piling on Dave ….

> 

> His post made me grumpy because it cast us back into Excluded Middle discourse. Neither are we going to go back to the way we were, nor are we going to remain in lock down mode. We ARE going to do something in the middle. What is that thing going to be? Public health people seem to thing that we are going to squeeze the infection rate DOWN and the testing rate UP to the point where test, trace, isolate becomes a practical policy. NM should be trialing such a program and Santa Fe right now, given that the County of 150k only has 2 identified new cases a day. That is so few, that it would seem that the City has zero endemic circulation. This small number of new cases could be entirely from people coming in from outside. It’s a wonderful opportunity to explore test, trace, isolate as a policy. 

> 

> I am sympathetic to the notion lurking in Dave’s post that too much effort is being expended to spare the White Elderly at the expense of the Brown Poor. But I have completely lost track of the statistics that would support sequestering the vulnerable and letting everybody else go about their business. That’s not going to be easy, as the recent experience of our elder-living facilities has demonstrated. And I keep reading reports of horrendous deaths of hale people in their 40’s. For people under 50, what is the relative lethality of this virus and the flu? That data must be out there.

> 

> By the way, speaking of predictions, I predicted back in February that there would be no democratic convention this year. That one’s looking pretty good.

> 

> By another way, my 7 years of Childhood Latin, otherwise totally useless, suggests to me that *Tempus Dictum* should be translated, “Only Time Will Tell”. 

> 

> 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 *Steven A Smith
> *Sent:* Monday, May 11, 2020 10:50 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the end of the pandemic

> 


> Dave -

>> 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.
> *Look away...nothing to see here... move along... nothing up my sleev*e!

> Glen (and others here) often use the idiom of "strawman" and "steelman" as apparatus for argument or maybe more to the point of my interest, illuminating dialog. I would like to bring up a related idiom of "the stalking horse". I would like to submit your prediction here as such is significantly meant (and taken) as a "stalking horse"... And the p;oint of it is "what is it helping us to think about in a different way?"

> I simply can't read this as a "simple observation / prediction"... I believe it is laced with judgements and assumptions... some I agree with and some which I find either questionable in substance or in intent, but all worth inspecting. 

> I don't want to bash you with this Dave, just put it out on the table in the same spirit I think you are offering these observations. What DOES this observation expose and what does it (perhaps) obscure? Can it do both at the same time? 

>> *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.*
> I think this phrase (framed by other phrases like "media hysteria") suggests that whatever this pandemic (virtually?) the entire planet has been experiencing is predominately a psychological/social experience, rather than the biological/physiological phenomenon identified as SARS-Cov-2 and it's biological coupling with it's newly found host population of modern humans who live, work, and socialize in confined spaces and travel widely (often in closely confined conveyances). It seems to imply that this last 4-8 weeks of radical self/government incited social-distancing has had NO (or little) effect on the biological reality of the network spread of a human-human airborne disease, and that it has been ENTIRELY (or mostly) a tool of social manipulation and control (and/or self-soothing?).

> I don't want to suggest for a moment that we as a people/culture are not capable of mass hysteria or mass illusions... and in fact would submit that ideas like "politics" or "economy" or "society" are constructed on precisely that. The part of your observation (without accepting or rejecting the prediction aspect) that exposes that aspect I think is very important... but to expose it in a way that is limited to undermining *one* illusion, whilst supporting *yet another* does not improve our circumstance, but rather simply stirs the mud in a different direction.

> I think your allusion to seat-belt laws (and my own extension of that to motorcycle helmet laws) is apt and relevant but wrong. Both seem to *only* preserve the sensitivities and sensibilities of the public and/or emergency-response people who have to scrape up the gore that might have been mildly less gory with those safety devices in use. I will also admit (in this tangent) that seat-belts and helmets usually/mostly also help to shift the costs of insurance-supported-recovery from/to funeral expenses, etc. I'm fairly confident that the my wearing a mask while mixing in a population whose R0 is close to or above 1.0 (whether from herd immunity or lack of infection in the community or effective prophylaxis) protects others from the *probability* of my infecting them, as well as *signalling* to them that *I* believe R0 to be sufficiently high without it so as to want to reduce my own participation with this asymmetric "spittle barrier". 

> I currently never leave my property without a bandana and raise it over my mouth and nose anytime I expect to be within a few yards of other people or am on approach to them. I am *over* careful with this by some standards for two specific reasons related to your "perception" point. I want to reinforce the idea that it is prudent for everyone who might have the virus to keep their spittle to themselves whether it is a cough, a sneeze, or just the specks that fly while speaking whether currently in a frothy mood or not. I also feel *midly* safer with that in place while standing opposite someone *without* their own face-covering and without a sneeze shield (virtually all retail encounters?) between us. I also almost entirely avoid close contact (same room) with anyone I recognize as high-risk (elderly, immuno-compromised, etc.) and maintain the 6'+ prescribed distance from everyone not already "in my pod" (nod to Nick's term) with or without masks.

> - Steve

> 

>  
> 

> 

>>  
>>  
>> davew
>>  
>>  
>>  
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