It seems to me as I listen to all these conflicts that two separate things are getting conflated.
- The personal level. On a personal level, the risk to most of us can be described this way: Roll a ten sided die. If you roll a 1, you get quite ill. Otherwise, not too bad, maybe not even noticeable. If you rolled a 1,roll again. If you roll another 1, you are dead. Otherwise, you survive.
No one wants to have to roll thus, but most of us just know that we are not going to roll two successive 1’s, it’s just not at all a likely outcome, at all. However, the next thing to realize is that making this dice roll is probably unavoidable. Almost everyone is going to be exposed, sooner or later. So extreme measures to avoid exposure have to be placed in that context. “The risk is really low, but I cannot avoid that risk.”
- The societal level. The typical person may face only a remote risk, but a community of 100,000 is certain to have thousands of serious cases. And unless action is taken, more of the serious cases will die, due to lack of facilities, staffing, supplies, etc.
Not only that, but if individuals feel (accurately) that they will be exposed eventually, and so put aside personal caution, too many of the illnesses will occur all at once, which makes it less likely that all the serious cases will receive the best interventions possible.
So… this is a weird situation where the truth (on a personal level) will not set us free. And it also hits a political nerve, in that we are a highly individualistic society where there is a prevalent view that “I don’t have to do something, just because it is good for other people.” Especially but not only among conservatives.
Keep in mind, that role of the did gets a lot worse the more of us get infected. Right now, it may seem like there is a 1 in 10 chance of dying, but as bed space dwindles, the chances of death are going to go up very fast.
In the UK you mean?
I’ll be there in just over 48hrs.
My flatmate hasn’t bought any extra supplies and is due to have his kids (aka disease carriers) this Friday for a week.
My only real consolation is that the Tuesday after that I’ll be in a large group of people, all from the UK, none of whom will have followed preventative measures, i.e. it doesn’t much matter what my flatmate and his kids do.
I’m also thinking that as I was in Madrid and then Gran Canaria, I’ve probably already rolled my ten sided die and not got my 1, so I am probably safe.
However my biggest worry was never getting ill, it was what happens when society breaks down.
We’re already there in practice. My employer banned corporate travel and imposed self-quarantine on personal travel to a list of infected countries weeks ago.
I don’t think it’s sensible to describe risk this way; it’s too conflated by age and (its correlate) comorbidity. If you’re under 10, you auto-pass, for instance ( or near enough).
I’ve played enough miniatures games not to like those odds…
Most of the Asian countries also have the institutional knowledge from the 2003 outbreak. They learned valuable lessons.
The lesson the rest of the world walked away with is, “Meh, it’s an Asian problem.”
I don’t think you’re wrong about the pre-made plan; I assume pretty much every country had a national pandemic plan based on the flu (except those countries who had major Sars outbreaks). It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the problems with the Italian response stems from that - they basically thought they had more time (vis a vis the timelines if you’re assuming a flu pandemic), and got caught on the back foot because of that.
As for the UK doing much better with track and tracing, I’m not particularly impressed with health services saying they’re estimating 5-10K cases while the official number of infected is only 500. That’s pretty much a complete breakdown of track and tracing. Many other countries started going to delay measures immediately they began to see indications that they no longer had semi-accurate numbers on the infected (i.e., when you start getting a lot of cases with unidentified origin). Which is what most pandemic action plans set up as the criteria for shifting phases from containment to the delay phase (though not everyone calls it that).
In general, the world is going to have to adapt to a new reality for the next couple of years, I suspect (and the pandemic plans I’ve read cover these scenarios).
If the delay phase proves to be ineffective and the virus tears through society, then we move into the next phase which is simply to try and limit the damage as much as possible. Health services are going to be overwhelmed and lots of people will die. And hopefully there is some immunity, so that future strains are less dangerous.
If the delay phase works well enough to stop spread of the virus, then we move back into the containment phase. That will involve many of the strictures we saw before, though hopefully better informed, based on the experiences of the past few months: That will without a doubt include quarantines on countries who have corona spread and very aggressive track and trace of infections. I also expect government will be much more willing to trigger-happy on imposing regional lock-downs than they were in the run-up to this. I doubt we’ll see full lock-downs again, unless things get really serious again (i.e., Italian like situation).
With any luck, we’ll get a vaccine and treatments that can alleviate how serious this is in the next 12-18 months - there is certainly a lot of money to be made for whoever succeeds. If not, I expect we are going to see some major shifts in societal conduct over the next few years (handshakes and highfives becoming a lot less socially prevalent, etc).
This one has been making the rounds in social media:
Oh, god, I have an old German friend who I keep in sporadic contact with. I dropped him a message yesterday asking if he and his family were okay.
He responded that he’s in Nepal. He had just made Everest base camp for his attempt on the mountain, but they shut down all attempts to summit a few days ago.
I’m trying to find out what he’s doing next, and if he can get home easily.
If I were him I would consider staying in Nepal.
Ever play Traveller?You could die during character creation.
Matt_W
4193
Yeah, I agree. The economy is like a huge clockwork made of myriad intermeshed gears. The 2008 recession basically tightened up credit markets and made everyone a bit nervous. It was like pouring honey into the clockwork. It still ran, but more slowly. What we’re doing now is reaching our hands into the clockwork and yanking out a bunch of gears, then crossing our fingers and wishing on a star that it still runs.
Canuck
4195
That’s right older Republicans, keep shaking hands with each other and congregating in large groups. Feel the love.
Canuck
4197
Any predictions on how many minutes before Dow stock trading is halted?
Did the circuit breakers kick-in? Or are they gone now?
