[FRIAM] RedState/BlueState OneState/TwoState

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -
I appreciate the gist of your thinking here...  I suppose the
overarching nature of my own is toward the *diversity* of the federated
subunits yielding a broader search-strategy for optimal (satisficing?)
response-strategies.   The net result is sub-optimal in terms of
minimizing suffering or reducing worse-case scenarios across the board,
but more optimal for finding unique edge/corner case strategies.    

The EU is probably a MORE interesting study than the Federated-United
States of 'Murrica in that they have a broader range of cultural/social
norms and more recent habit/ability to shut down borders and enforce
things on their citizens (and guests) more strictly and diversely.   

I've been thinking/studying/even-feeling through a multi-scale network
lens of sorts...   checking in with my friends and relations around the
world (including the folks here who have weighed in from around the
world) (BTW... we have a moderately broad geo-political distribution
here and I would love to hear *more* direct experiences from this
community...  Expat in Ecuador, Native of INdia, Australians,
German(s?), Egyptian, Cuban, ???).  

My own global connections span AU, NZ, Ukraine, UK, SE, NL.  I'm sure
among us, we have a 1st order connection that covers much of the
globe.     In my case, I'm watching how my two daughters in OR and CO
are experiencing this, while my mother/sister IN AZ are having
yet-another very different experience (the first two follow Democracy
Now! while the last two watch Fox&Friends on TV).

As we try to meta-model (gather/analyze data and build toy models) this
pandemic is exposing a LOT of assumptions about social mixing,
especially under emergency conditions...   and circumstances evolving
over time as awareness/denial evolves over time.    Also the dual of
social/mobility-networks (commutes, shopping, family/friend visiting,
long-distance travel) and geopolitical regions (state/nation borders).

Simultaneously I'm looking at my 1.49 acre homestead and (mildly)
preparing it for "the coming Apocalypse" by being more thoughtful about
what/when/how I plant, adding chickens, building up some off-grid
PV/storage so I can maintian comms and water even if my (end of a long
line) power fails due to (minor) social/infrastructure breakdown.   This
leads to thinking at many scales from the microorganisms in the guts of
the worms in my vermicompost to the vegetable scraps I give them to the
size of the seeds Iplant in the pots, raised beds, and furrows, to the
bushes, saplings and mature trees.   The amount of power my cell-phone
wants to stay connected to the amount my laptop wants to play videos,
the amount my solar heat needs to circulate hot air from collector to
rock-bed, to what my well requires to deliver garden-scale water, to
what my Chevy Volt wants to take me on a round trip to the nearest town.
  These are all orders-of-magnitude apart , while their utility is
roughly inversely scaled for some purposes.

Ramble,
 - Steve


> Aha! Found it:
>
> Why Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Far Lower Than In Other Countries
> https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820595489/why-germanys-coronavirus-death-rate-is-far-lower-than-in-other-countries
>
> So, I suppose the (hypothetical) causal flow goes something like: federated system allows for first-past-the-post test development, lots of early testing leads to more accurate estimates of infected, leads to finer grained response (including earlier realization about asymptomatic transmission).
>
> But this sounds a bit like rationalization to me. The causation centers on lots of testing, however that testing arises. A centralized system that ramps up testing quickly would have the same result. In the case of the US, our federation did NOT result in a ramp up of early testing (well, it did here ... UW did the lion's share of early testing here in WA, but not over the entire federation of states). So our federal system will see the *bad* of being a federation, but not the good ... at least until after the poor and frail die and those of us who survive can rationalize about how our diversity makes us so healthy.
>
>
> On 4/8/20 6:31 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
>> However, a story from the radio or somesuch the other day seems to contradict me. (I was exercising and couldn't pay close enough attention.) I heard someone *assert* that Germany is fairing, practically, so well against the virus *because* it's federated. I can't find a link to that or similar stories. So, I can't tell if they're just post-hoc rationalizing or have some data to show it's the federated decoupling that's causative.
>