Pandemic Predictions
Jul. 23rd, 2020 09:53 pmThe 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
( Read more... )
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
( Read more... )