Covid March Retrospective
Jun. 11th, 2020 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThere were a lot of articles with catchy titles flying around in March. Three months later, what do I think of them?
"Flatten the Curve"
This entered popular lingo, and did a sterling job at giving the people who wanted to do anything a concept to rally around.
What about the content? In the cause of "it's better to do something than nothing", it conflated two very different scenarios: "we desperately need to get this under control quickly so it doesn't infect everyone" and "we need to spread this out over three months so the hospitals wouldn't get overwhelmed". This was good for motivating people, but muddied the waters about what was actually likely to happen. In truth, as I understand it, we DID need to get it under control, and "spreading the epidemic out" would have been a matter of decades not months.
It's probably too late to stop people saying it, but it's unhelpful because of that confusion.
"The curve is lie"
I'm still angry at this. It correctly pointed out everything I just said above, but the headline was badly chosen in being likely to encourage people to give up.
"Herd Immunity"
Don't say "a herd immunity strategy". That's like saying a "if we let them burn all the fields they won't be able to damage our food supply any further" strategy.
Yes, herd immunity describes a situation where we can all go on public transport because only 20% of people aren't immune and so every outbreak just naturally fizzles out. We have this for diseases which have already run rampant or are vaccinated against: it's not that literally everyone is immune, it's that the non-immune people are spread far enough apart there's little chance of them infecting each other more than once or twice.
But it's not a strategy. A strategy is something you DO. Aiming for herd immunity meant accepting that the disease will infect nearly everyone, accepting that hospitals will get overwhelmed, and praying like hell that once people had caught it they actually stayed immune for at least a decade or two (which was unknown). But you couldn't really affect any of that except by doing nothing and hoping. Or maybe, digging a big moat round nursing homes (which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what this government did).
It was always possible that accepting unchecked infection was unavoidable. But anyone honestly saying that would admit that there would probably be a million deaths. They would sound like they were delivering news of a tragedy. Not "rah, rah, rah, ignore the problem, don't look at the deaths behind the curtain".
Even if you hate the government for suggesting it using the terminology of "herd immunity strategy" is playing into the governments reflexive propaganda. It conflates "we will find a vaccine" with "we do nothing" when everyone knows they herd immunity strategy really meant "do nothing". And it sounds like it represents some sort of plan which would have been undertaken, not "wait until the worst possible outcome has already happened, and then try to describe it in a way that makes us sound like we achieved something". Say "do nothing strategy" instead.
What I thought
As mentioned several times above, I think that people writing a catchy article should have been upfront on whether they thought everyone being infected was inevitable and they were trying to minimise the damage from that, or if they thought we needed to do everything we could to prevent that, even if it meant gambling on unspecified medical breakthroughs.
Both of those are plausible positions! But a lot of people including me took some time to see that that was what someone else was assuming, and a lot of angst was wasted on criticising "suppress it fast and try to keep it under control until we have an exit strategy" plans as if "it's inevitable" just hadn't occurred to them, and a lot of angst wasted on criticising "let everyone die" plans as if they were failed attempts to suppress it.
"Flatten the Curve"
This entered popular lingo, and did a sterling job at giving the people who wanted to do anything a concept to rally around.
What about the content? In the cause of "it's better to do something than nothing", it conflated two very different scenarios: "we desperately need to get this under control quickly so it doesn't infect everyone" and "we need to spread this out over three months so the hospitals wouldn't get overwhelmed". This was good for motivating people, but muddied the waters about what was actually likely to happen. In truth, as I understand it, we DID need to get it under control, and "spreading the epidemic out" would have been a matter of decades not months.
It's probably too late to stop people saying it, but it's unhelpful because of that confusion.
"The curve is lie"
I'm still angry at this. It correctly pointed out everything I just said above, but the headline was badly chosen in being likely to encourage people to give up.
"Herd Immunity"
Don't say "a herd immunity strategy". That's like saying a "if we let them burn all the fields they won't be able to damage our food supply any further" strategy.
Yes, herd immunity describes a situation where we can all go on public transport because only 20% of people aren't immune and so every outbreak just naturally fizzles out. We have this for diseases which have already run rampant or are vaccinated against: it's not that literally everyone is immune, it's that the non-immune people are spread far enough apart there's little chance of them infecting each other more than once or twice.
But it's not a strategy. A strategy is something you DO. Aiming for herd immunity meant accepting that the disease will infect nearly everyone, accepting that hospitals will get overwhelmed, and praying like hell that once people had caught it they actually stayed immune for at least a decade or two (which was unknown). But you couldn't really affect any of that except by doing nothing and hoping. Or maybe, digging a big moat round nursing homes (which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what this government did).
It was always possible that accepting unchecked infection was unavoidable. But anyone honestly saying that would admit that there would probably be a million deaths. They would sound like they were delivering news of a tragedy. Not "rah, rah, rah, ignore the problem, don't look at the deaths behind the curtain".
Even if you hate the government for suggesting it using the terminology of "herd immunity strategy" is playing into the governments reflexive propaganda. It conflates "we will find a vaccine" with "we do nothing" when everyone knows they herd immunity strategy really meant "do nothing". And it sounds like it represents some sort of plan which would have been undertaken, not "wait until the worst possible outcome has already happened, and then try to describe it in a way that makes us sound like we achieved something". Say "do nothing strategy" instead.
What I thought
As mentioned several times above, I think that people writing a catchy article should have been upfront on whether they thought everyone being infected was inevitable and they were trying to minimise the damage from that, or if they thought we needed to do everything we could to prevent that, even if it meant gambling on unspecified medical breakthroughs.
Both of those are plausible positions! But a lot of people including me took some time to see that that was what someone else was assuming, and a lot of angst was wasted on criticising "suppress it fast and try to keep it under control until we have an exit strategy" plans as if "it's inevitable" just hadn't occurred to them, and a lot of angst wasted on criticising "let everyone die" plans as if they were failed attempts to suppress it.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 03:08 pm (UTC)I thought HMG's thinking, however misguided, was supposed to be: we'll go for herd immunity, people can tolerate lockdown for only so long, so let's try to time lockdown for exactly when projections are starting to look iffy for the hospitals, that's our best chance of getting the bulk of the population immune without overwhelming the NHS. I might have understood their earlier thinking quite wrongly though!
no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 08:35 pm (UTC)I think they genuinely were working from different numbers. It sounds like what happened was, someone had a model for a flu pandemic where that strategy of turning a single peak into two flattened peaks might make all the difference. And that model got used, either because no-one really accepted the number estimates coming out of China. Or because the government seized on the first plan that made them sound good without doing anything very drastic. Or because someone said, "well, there's no point trying to propose some kind of national lockdown, the government would never allow it" and was slow in revisiting that decision in light of "that's what China did reluctantly, that's what Italy did reluctantly, that's what every other country is doing, maybe we need to actually consider that."
So I think they did MEAN that, but I think they were irresponsible in picking the answer they thought would look best in headlines rather than the answer that would save lives.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 11:53 am (UTC)