Pandemic Predictions
Jul. 23rd, 2020 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThe good outcome
When lockdown started I was scared the infection rate was just going to go up and up. I thought the government was likely to just reflexively sleepwalk into a strategy of "go through the motions of lockdown, downplay the problem, bury the numbers, pretend everything is fine" and switch seamlessly to "oh well, completely unforseeable, will of the gods, too late now, no point crying over spilt milk, lockdown failed, lets try to get the deaths over with as quickly as possible".
If everyone gets sick at once would our clockwork supply chains falter? Would we have actual food shortages? This seemed like a real risk. Although a "real risk" can mean anywhere from "not likely, but likely enough to need a plan" to "likely" depending on the type of risk, which I didn't consciously think through. I was torn between a justified status quo balance and a recognition that we had almost no precedent for how we'd deal with a pandemic like this.
But that didn't happen, the infection rate actually DID go down again despite government shilly-shallying. Delaying turned a short lockdown into a long lockdown, and we might yet get another one, but it didn't yet turn it into the worst case scenario, so that was a lot better than it might be.
What else turned out well?
The bad outcome
I remember asking, what good might come of the lockdown. Would we normalise convenient supermarket delivery? Would supermarkets have to collaborate into a national delivery service that had fewer separate vans and private cars driving around? Would the government have to admit it NEEDED a basic income to keep the country running? Would working from home be normalised?
Would the idea of "oh, we can just pressure mothers to do childcare AND a job" as a foundation for society finally die?
Would we eliminate habitual flying?
Even if none of that, would the government take basic steps like providing funding for quarantining anyone going into a nursing home, and giving decent sick leave to people working there (or ideally, paying people to live on site!)
I had all these plans for how society might change. Every time somneone in governbment got sick or something important shut down I thought "maybe NOW government will take it seriously".
But just like the worry slowly ebbed away with familiarity, so did the hope.
I think I really should have foreseen that none of that happened. The government poured resources into keeping things going as much like normal as possible. New services happened slowly if at all (because obviously, the government aren't any good at anything). Everything happened via the government telling businesses what they had to do, with little help or responsibility from the government.
They didn't set out to infect everyone, but they aggressively concentrated on problems of businesses and on ignoring the problems of nursing homes :(
As many people as possible were forced back into work to keep middle class lifestyles ticking over as much like normal as possible :(
Gender roles if anything became more polarised :(
Flying fell to about half and has climbed back up again ever since. I've no idea what all those flights are but they are happening :(
What else turned out badly?
The Ugly outcome
This is a dress rehearsal for whether we take action on climate breakdown. I always thought, surely when it gets THIS bad even the government can't gloss it over. They'll have to admit that they need to take SOME measures fairly promptly.
Ha ha. No. If they'd locked down as soon as it became clear Italy hadn't contained it, we might have got away with locking down a couple of cities. Or putting quarantines on people entering the country. No, they delayed until we had to have months of lockdown, and are erring on the side of opening up too soon and recreating the same problem.
If they can't make the logical leap from "opening businesses without a functioning test and trace system was bad in March, maybe it's also bad in July", they're doing exactly the same thing about climate change, waiting until public pressure forces them to act, when every delay makes the problem many times worse :(
People: Oh no, we're racing toward the cliff edge of no return!
Government: Don't worry, we've blacked out the windscreen. Maybe the cliff isn't really there, how would we know?
When lockdown started I was scared the infection rate was just going to go up and up. I thought the government was likely to just reflexively sleepwalk into a strategy of "go through the motions of lockdown, downplay the problem, bury the numbers, pretend everything is fine" and switch seamlessly to "oh well, completely unforseeable, will of the gods, too late now, no point crying over spilt milk, lockdown failed, lets try to get the deaths over with as quickly as possible".
If everyone gets sick at once would our clockwork supply chains falter? Would we have actual food shortages? This seemed like a real risk. Although a "real risk" can mean anywhere from "not likely, but likely enough to need a plan" to "likely" depending on the type of risk, which I didn't consciously think through. I was torn between a justified status quo balance and a recognition that we had almost no precedent for how we'd deal with a pandemic like this.
But that didn't happen, the infection rate actually DID go down again despite government shilly-shallying. Delaying turned a short lockdown into a long lockdown, and we might yet get another one, but it didn't yet turn it into the worst case scenario, so that was a lot better than it might be.
What else turned out well?
The bad outcome
I remember asking, what good might come of the lockdown. Would we normalise convenient supermarket delivery? Would supermarkets have to collaborate into a national delivery service that had fewer separate vans and private cars driving around? Would the government have to admit it NEEDED a basic income to keep the country running? Would working from home be normalised?
Would the idea of "oh, we can just pressure mothers to do childcare AND a job" as a foundation for society finally die?
Would we eliminate habitual flying?
Even if none of that, would the government take basic steps like providing funding for quarantining anyone going into a nursing home, and giving decent sick leave to people working there (or ideally, paying people to live on site!)
I had all these plans for how society might change. Every time somneone in governbment got sick or something important shut down I thought "maybe NOW government will take it seriously".
But just like the worry slowly ebbed away with familiarity, so did the hope.
I think I really should have foreseen that none of that happened. The government poured resources into keeping things going as much like normal as possible. New services happened slowly if at all (because obviously, the government aren't any good at anything). Everything happened via the government telling businesses what they had to do, with little help or responsibility from the government.
They didn't set out to infect everyone, but they aggressively concentrated on problems of businesses and on ignoring the problems of nursing homes :(
As many people as possible were forced back into work to keep middle class lifestyles ticking over as much like normal as possible :(
Gender roles if anything became more polarised :(
Flying fell to about half and has climbed back up again ever since. I've no idea what all those flights are but they are happening :(
What else turned out badly?
The Ugly outcome
This is a dress rehearsal for whether we take action on climate breakdown. I always thought, surely when it gets THIS bad even the government can't gloss it over. They'll have to admit that they need to take SOME measures fairly promptly.
Ha ha. No. If they'd locked down as soon as it became clear Italy hadn't contained it, we might have got away with locking down a couple of cities. Or putting quarantines on people entering the country. No, they delayed until we had to have months of lockdown, and are erring on the side of opening up too soon and recreating the same problem.
If they can't make the logical leap from "opening businesses without a functioning test and trace system was bad in March, maybe it's also bad in July", they're doing exactly the same thing about climate change, waiting until public pressure forces them to act, when every delay makes the problem many times worse :(
People: Oh no, we're racing toward the cliff edge of no return!
Government: Don't worry, we've blacked out the windscreen. Maybe the cliff isn't really there, how would we know?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 02:38 pm (UTC)I wonder what you think they should have done about the problems of nursing homes? Unlike hospitals, which are run by the NHS and which have to do whatever the Minister demands of them, most nursing homes are private businesses and the government has no direct control over them. Given that, what could they have done?
It's also worth pointing out that two-thirds of nursing homes had no coronvavirus deaths at all. So these 'problems' weren't inevitable: the nursing homes that were hit clearly did something wrong, that the others didn't. What was it?
no subject
Date: 2020-08-02 02:25 pm (UTC)That second doesn't follow from the first at all. Hospitals were sending asymptomatic, untested patients to them before we really knew that was a thing.