[FRIAM] Covid and Politics

[Gary Schiltz]

Nick, you're reinforcing the negative perceptions that most of the world
has toward the USA. If 1% of the population dies, that's 1% of 8 billion
people, i.e. about 80 million. Not 3.5 million. Unless you want to close
off borders across the world, we all have to think of this as a human
disease, not an American one. I don't mean to be mean, just blunt.

What all this points out to me is just how damnably hard it must be to be a
politician advocating for policies without really knowing the risks of
opening vs isolation. We still don't know how deadly this virus is, since
we still don't have a good handle on that pesky denominator (number that
die from Sars-Cov2 / number infected). If I understand right, we (USA?
Europe? Asia?) generally only test people who we think might be infected.
I'm not a statistician nor epidemiologist, but it seems to me that we
should first take a very large (millions), truly random sample of people
with the initial goal of testing to identify a set of people who "have" the
virus. Then follow these people for the month or two that it takes for the
virus to run its course, categorizing them by how serious the disease was
for them. Knowing that the risk of death might be one or two percent would
suggest drastically tighter restrictions that if it is less than one tenth
of a percent.

I don't want to see a lot of people die (especially older people, who I
think are VERY valuable for their experience and knowledge). But if this
drags on for years, I truly fear for the fate of advanced civilization.

On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 1:00 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Merle,
>
>
>
> So, we flattened the curve.  Good.  That’s done.  But the whole metaphor
> of flattening the curve has an implication that has never been explored.
> Other than the excess deaths that occur because intensive care fails, a
> flattened curve has just as many deaths as a peaky curve.  So if we only
> *flatten* the curve, then somewhere around 1 percent of the population
> dies.  That’s 3.5 million people.  Is that tolerable?  If yes, then our
> policy consists of letting people go back to work and jumping on any
> outbreaks that occur before they can get “peaky”.
>
>
>
> If no, then what?  The next policy down, it seems to me, or “up” in terms
> of invasiveness, is what I have been calling the “white-van policy”.  Every
> suspect case or contact is tested and those people who cannot show a
> negative test or immunity are  *immediately *isolated and cared for at
> government expense until they show negative.  Such a policy, paired with a
> limitation on large gatherings, would probably eliminate the virus from
> being a major consideration by september.  But the only state I know of
> that has even GESTURED in that direction is Massachusetts, and they are
> no-where NEAR getting there.  Mortality under half a million, all in?
>
>
>
> What frustrates me to distraction is that Santa Fe is not exploring such a
> strategy right now.  At two cases a day, how many contacts could these
> cases possibly have?  Hire a bunch of young folks to do contact tracing and
> isolation support and then gradually open up.
>
>
>
> There’s a third strategy which nobody has considered out loud, call it the
> “Isolate the Vulnerable Strategy”.  Since something like 80 percent (?) of
> those who die are vulnerable, suppose you isolate people like me (like us?)
> and let the rest of them pass the disease around pretty freely.  Let’s say
> we isolate 150 million people and let the others roam free.  We could
> probably get to herd immunity in the 200 million by December at a cost of a
> million deaths?  That would imply 8 million hospitalizations over six
> months?  Is that tolerable?
>
>
>
> Do you remember the good old days when the notion of “death panels” sent
> the right wing into a frenzy.  Hell, now we are talking about “death
> trenches”.
>
>
>
> I dunno.
>
>
>
> 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 *Merle Lefkoff
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 26, 2020 10:52 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Covid and Politics
>
>
>
> Democrats are far more likely to live in counties where the virus has
> ravaged the community, while Republicans are more likely to live in
> counties that have been relatively unscathed by the illness, though they
> are paying an economic price. Counties won by President Trump
> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/donald-trump.html> in
> 2016 have reported just 27 percent of the virus infections and 21 percent
> of the deaths — even though 45 percent of Americans live in these
> communities, a New York Times analysis has found.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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