[FRIAM] lockdowns

Wed Apr 7 15:14:39 EDT 2021

Steve, 

Please don’t over interpret.  I was not calling anybody out.  I was asking a question.  I “want” it to be the case that concerted community action can be effective and that “law” plays a role is such actions.  I surmise that others “want” something else to be true, but I don’t know what that is. It’s a feeling I get from many members of this list, Dave, EricC, Glen, Marcus, even your honored self.   Notice that in this case Dave and I are both exploring the possibility that public health campaigns have less effect than the are supposed to.  But while such revelations make me uneasy, they seem to cause Dave a jolt of pleasure.   Now I am just reading a new note from Dave on the other screen that suggests that I totally misunderstand him, so perhaps I should leave off this, and look at that.   

I think I am not truly a complexity fan because if I were, I would see that we never have enough information to control out fate as a community.  The foreseen consequences dwarf the foreseen ones.   But doesn’t also follow the cannot control our fates as individuals, also? And that leads to sophomoric despair, which I also deplore.  So, you see, my conversation with Dave is not really about covid, but about life led in uncertainty.  

Nick  

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 10:48 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] lockdowns

EricC, et al-

I really appreciate your elaborate analysis of this (general) phenomenon.   I suspect this last year, the myriad governmental (and NGO) responses around the world will provide a *wealth* of data for Forensic Epidmiologists.   

Not picking on DaveW particularly, I found it incredibly specious this year every time someone (probably including myself) made an ad-hoc comparison between an apple, a pear, and an orangatan and tried to draw some specific conclusion from it.   It always felt like clutching for confirmation bias, maybe most painfully when I caught myself doing it.

Like your own perspective on Sweden's response, I *wanted* to believe that a lightly populated, very socially coherent, somewhat geographically isolated could modulate R0 through distributed, personal decision-making with top-down/centralized  "advice" and "reporting".   So I cherry picked from samples and perspectives that *appeared to be working* while the naysayers were gleefully doing the same thing in an opposite sense.   I *want* (still) to believe that 

I would claim the same for RedState BlueState players in the very same game.   I *wanted* to believe that Sturgis was the stupidest thing anyone could do (from a public-health perspective) and that the whole state of South Dakota (and near environs) would collapse into a Zombie Apocalypse within a few weeks, and then as any strong-positive correlations came up, I jumped up and down and shouted "See, See, See!" (in my own head while shaking my tiny fist at my Large and Tiny Screens).   Same for a million other examples (various COVID-denying/downplaying/overplaying examples with various positive/negative feedback samples).

NickT -

I appreciate your calling this out as "why do you *want* to believe X?".    I can't remember what the questionaire was that some of us took to yield this SnarkChart, but I think there is a correlation.   I actually think this is the wrong basis space (axes) but the Authoritarian/Anarchist axis seems relevant.   I don't know what Left/Right imply here (Collective vs Individual Good?).

  <https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iZhLRPaUWig/X4U96Up4lXI/AAAAAAAAAiM/mp1b7W6ydXAtlen6o9YFq1zcUX648mvzgCLcBGAsYHQ/w494-h640/Page_2.jpg> 

On 4/7/21 8:24 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

We will be at least a few years post-mass-vaccination before we will be able to really get a handle on what worked and what didn't. As long as there are more waves yet to come, we cannot possibly draw firm conclusions about which strategies worked and which didn't. 

However, tentative evaluations still have value. In that veign, a decent New Yorker article just dropped looking at Sweden's response: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/swedens-pandemic-experiment 

One thing that stands out to me in the beginning of the New Yorker article is Sweden's early rhetoric arguing that any measures they take be based on evidence. To the extent that really played into their response, that is a terrible strategy if you find yourself in the midst of a pandemic. This seems like a solid William James Will-To-Believe issue; the choice of how to respond was live, unavoidable, and momentous. Doing nothing wasn't neutrally "waiting for evidence", it was taking a clear side, and to pretend otherwise couldn't be anything other than disingenuous political rhetoric. 

I have consistently been a fan of Sweden's response as a-viable-hypothesis-to-test. It WAS reasonable to hypothesize that a race to mass immunity would - over the long haul - result in a better outcome for the nation. And, as covered well towards the end of the New Yorker piece, it is not clear Sweden screwed up (compared with averages of countries that chose various stricter lockdowns). If you had pressed the pause button at certain points over the last year, it seemed like Sweden was horribly wrong (e.g., mid-April). If you had pressed the pause button at other points, it seemed like Sweden had achieved its goal (mid-July to mid-October averaged only 2 or 3 deaths per day). Until things run their course, and we have a lot of time to look at the data, we won't know for sure. And also, even then, we need to remember that when-a-vaccine-would-arrive-and-how-good-it-would-be was an unknown, which made any decision to bank on a quick vaccine a big gamble. 

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 11:55 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi, Dave, 

Am I allowed to answer the same email twice?  Well, I guess we'll see.  

I cannot imagine states more different than north Dakota and Connecticut.  Ct is 48th in size, 4th in density, and was next to two of the early hot spots.  North Dakota is 17th in size, and 49th in density and was late to the party.  ND is first in total cases per population, CT is 24th.  You're trolling me, right?  Omigosh.  I've been pranked. 

Still, I want to know -- NOT a rhetorical question -- why you WANT to believe that public health measures don't work.  

Nick 

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of J Dalessandro
Sent: Tuesday, April 6, 2021 8:24 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] lockdowns

Sorry, but my experience in Australia was/is much different.  Lock down and serious penalties greatly reduced community transmitted cases.  Early intervention and penalties was key.

//Joe

---
j03d at photonmail.com <mailto:j03d at photonmail.com> 

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 8:56 AM, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm <mailto:profwest at fastmail.fm> > wrote:

> the AP published a study that seems to demonstrate lock downs had no effect on Corona spread. South Dakota and Connecticut (small states) had very similar outcomes despite widely variant degree of lock down. So too Florida and California, the latter draconian while the former laissez-faire.
>
> Of course all the usual caveats applicable to such studies apply.
>
> I wonder if any country/state would dare to do an honest cost-benefit study?
>
> davew
>
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