An Example of RCA

An article that asks the '5 why's', and digs deep into why black men are particularly vulnerable to coronavirus. 

Coronavirus, Bias, Etc.

This year has changed my opinions on human nature, but it's hard to really explain how or why.

Mostly because I hadn't actually thought we were all that logical in the first place. I mean, I adore people. We're quirky, and weird, and have the potential for astounding acts of kindness and sinister acts of selfishness... but we're not actually all that good at logic. This is not to say we're terrible, we've got some great advantages in other ways. Pattern recognition, quick decision-making. All things that have allowed us to survive over the years. Logic is important, and worth striving towards, but mostly because we should try to be aware of when we're not being logical.

That's one of the first things Sudoku teaches you. When you're in there trying to figure out what number fits in the square, if you go with your instinct and put in a number that feels right - you're probably wrong. You absolutely have to have some basis for deciding what number fits in the square, if not you'll screw up the game and lose.

Pattern-recognition, giving personal anecdotes more weight than statistical analysis, confirmation bias and using emotions to decide which facts we believe (rather than science) - they're all pretty typical human behavior. Awareness of when we do this makes it easier to recognize and correct for it. And logic is ultimately better than the alternative. (There's a whole discussion I could have on belief systems, and the ways belief systems reinforce themselves when something seems to prove them wrong, and the role science can play as something different and also the same. That is, science has the potential to self-correct and focuses on evidence... but there are also scientists who use it more as a belief system, with all it's flaws, so that commonly accepted science is sometimes wrong. More research and experiments and scientific studies can eventually correct for that, though. Not in the way that evangelical Christians explain away something they assume God isn't behind - like a political loss - as 'the work of the devil', either.)

So anyways. We're not all that logical, and I've known that for a while, so I'm not exactly shocked by the multiple examples of this that 2020 has given us.

And yet...

And yet I had expected better. I don't know, I suppose I'd thought death and dying would be a huge wake up call. That all those biases and anecdotes and whatnot might affect people's thinking for politics in a normal year, but 250,000+ dead would matter.

Stalin said that "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." I have never liked the cynicism, lack of empathy, and sheer evil behind a statement like that.

And yet, as goal posts have moved and the death toll continues to rise, I think there is more truth to that then I want to admit.

I have seen what I had previously thought were somewhat credible news sources publish the worst and stupidest assessments of coronavirus. I mean, I'm not an epidemiologist myself, so take it for what it's worth... but even though illnesses do appear to rise, and spike, and taper off that's generally either because it spread so far and wide that it's hard to find new people to infect, or because of actions taken to stop the spread. So when one of the earliest and most widely publicized predictions for coronavirus decided to use the Chinese experience to model the data, well. Our experience would only mimic the Chinese one if we had taken the same sorts of actions. 

If we weren't quarantining, and testing, and doing what China did to control the virus then why the hell would you think our coronavirus infection rate and death rate would follow the same trajectory?!?

And okay, again. I'm not an epidemiologist and the articles don't go much into the nitty gritty. Maybe the models took that into account? (Though given how wildly wrong the predictions I linked to were, it seems like they either didn't - or assumed the US would lockdown to a degree that hasn't happened.)

As with so much in life, these wildly inaccurate predictions have already been forgotten. And yet they served their purpose. That is, they were published during the height of uncertainty, and gave people looking for a reason not to freak out something to cling to. Gave decision-makers cover for saying 'it won't be that bad, don't worry'...

And here we are, over 250K dead. And it's just a statistic.

I know part of why that is. Part of it is our human tendency to rely more on anecdotes and personal experience. I mean, nobody in my immediate family has been diagnosed with covid yet. Nobody I'm close to. I think I had one facebook friend, a rather loose acquaintance, who tested positive and told everyone.

If all I went by was my own personal experience, I would probably think coronavirus was overblown.

However.

However, statistics matter. However, for as lucky as I have been (so far), there are others who have seen coronavirus sweep through their entire family. 

However, it shouldn't have to affect me personally for me to care, or take it seriously. With the way exponential growth works, by the time its hitting me and mine it'll be far too late. 

However, we all should be able to learn from other people's experiences, so that it doesn't take the loss of someone we care about to make us change our minds.

I don't know how much of our current situation is because of the absolute disaster of our national leadership and how much truly is human nature. I can't help but think it's worse, though. There probably would always be people who think it's overblown, and refuse to wear masks, and all that... I've seen some articles about the Spanish flu that show as much. I just don't think it would have been as widespread if we didn't have the President of the United States refusing to wear a mask and giving out massive amounts of disinformation. 

Which brings us to today, in a sense. Because the issue has become so polarized that there's pretty much no ability to talk to each other. We live in vastly different worlds, with vastly different ideas of what's going on, and it's hard to see how and when we'll ever have a shared reality again.

That's the strange part, to be honest. I had thought that people dying would be an indisputable reality. I had always thought the notion of 'truthiness' and a post-truth world was pretty much bullshit. It works for philosophical things ungrounded in reality, but again - dead bodies are pretty much indisputable. Dead is dead, you can't pretend that they didn't die (though you can apparently say that it was pneumonia, or the regular flu, or a stroke, and pretend that it wasn't actually covid that killed them. And most people aren't comparing the current overall mortality rates to previous years to realize that there's a ton of unaccounted for deaths. And if you do make that point, they then argue that those unaccounted for deaths come from the lockdown.... even though I think we would have noticed thousands more people dying of suicide or whatever it is they think the lockdowns are doing to get people killed.)

Florida, by the way, is one of the worst for fudging their data and pretending everything is fine. I've been monitoring the state because I'm wondering how long that will truly last. Surely people are noticing that a lot of people are dying? Even more than can be accounted for by the number of covid deaths? 

Then again, on an individual basis maybe there's no reason to. They don't know anyone who actually died, or accept that it was for non-covid causes, or something. (Whenever I check for Florida covid on twitter, there's almost always some sort of misinformation push. Most recently it was some Federalist article saying Florida is doing better than Illinois and wondering why mainstream media drags Florida so much... and it's no use telling them how badly Florida is lying with their statistics.)

It's the degree of willful blindness that bothers me, I think. I've long accepted that partisan bias and confirmation bias means that there's always someone extreme on the edges. But I've seen even people I thought were reasonably good at critical thinking buy into some of the worst arguments.

And, like... I sympathize. I really do. I hate sounding all doom and gloom (and considering we've gotten this far, I have considered revising my estimates. Then again, we seem to be facing the worst parts of the epidemic now. As expected, more and more hospitals are nearing capacity... and people have gotten exhausted of social distancing, the holiday season is coming up, the weather is turning colder. The crazy thing is that a vaccine is right around the corner, and if we'd had halfway decent leadership a lot more people would have survived long enough to see that... which is also maddening if you think about it. But there's almost no point dwelling on it right now. If things get bad enough that might change, but for now... well. Not a lot to do about it.)

Anyways. I remember how strange it felt in March, when I'd  investigated enough for my own satisfaction and expected a long period of lockdown to come. My Little had a school dance, and I had a sinking feeling I knew how awful the next few months would be and privately decided to hell with it all. I was going to help her and her friends make some good memories, something that hopefully would give them a bright spot to look back upon in the months to come. So one of her friends couldn't afford to get a manicure? I'll pay for it, why not? And they want to eat out for lunch? Sure... no problem. Kid needs a ride home after the dance? I gotcha. (I do think it worked, though I'm pretty sure none of the girls realized how much thought went into it. They were shrieking and giggling and goofing off and being teenaged girls just like they should be.)

It's sort of the same feeling now, tbh. I expected we'd reach a tipping point earlier. I mean, I knew we'd be in lockdown for months... but I hadn't really expected it would be eight months and counting. I hadn't expected it to take so long to get to the more remote parts of the US, either.

The vaccine is right around the corner, and maybe it won't ever get as bad as I fear. 

On the other hand - as I've said. More and more people are talking about hospitals that are maxed out. Staff members that are exhausted and unable to keep up. People who need treatment and no beds are free - not just for their hospital, but anything in a two hour radius. 

And we just had Thanksgiving, where there's still a large portion of the population that doesn't take coronavirus seriously. That's on top of election day, and people celebrating Biden's win (mostly masked, thankfully) and MAGA folks protesting...

All signs point to a terrible, horrible, and dark winter. 

And nobody wants to hear it.

Information Warfare, Blame, and the Netflix show The Untamed

In typical fashion I'm going to talk about an entirely fictional show and then apply the topics of that discussion to the real world. Also with no regard to spoilers for said show.

And yet again I am using The Untamed to kickstart everything.

I mentioned that public perception plays a huge role in the show... and actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. The main character, Wei Wuxian, starts using powers that are disturbing to pretty much everyone else. Corpses, resentful energy, etc. It makes it very easy for people to believe nasty rumors about what he's using those powers for, with little to no relation to reality. His first life cumulates in a tragedy through a combination of rumor-mongering, his own arrogance, bad luck... and yes, some deliberate manipulation by some pretty shady characters. The degree to which each of these elements plays a role is something we could debate for hours, but that's not what this post is about. Or rather, that's only a small part of what this post is about.

See, there's a character (Jin Guangshan, though it's hard to say how much was done by him and how much was done by the bastard son he reluctantly recognized and used to do his dirty work - Jin Guangyao) who saw Wei Wuxian's abilities (able to fight thousands! On his own! And he created a powerful spritual tool - the Stygian Tiger Amulet - that helped him do so) and considered him a threat. This character also coveted the Stygian Tiger Amulet Wei Wuxian created. The story isn't quite clear on just how much he was responsible for it, but there definitely seems to have been a smear campaign in place.

They put everything Wei Wuxian did in the worst light, exaggerated his arrogance, spun outright lies implying that Wei Wuxian didn't respect his adopted brother (and now sect leader), etc. There's a really interesting scene where we see the cultivators discussing what to do about Wei Wuxian, and you see a few people try to stand up for him and defend him - and get shouted down or dismissed. 

When a pompous and arrogant Jin noble got cursed, he assumed Wei Wuxian had done it - with no proof - and gathered a couple hundred cultivators to ambush him. That ambush turned tragic when someone important died during the fight, and Wei Wuxian was blamed. Eventually it led to all the cultivators gathering together and talking about attacking Wei Wuxian, who at that point (grief-ridden, angry, and maybe a bit unhinged) invited himself to the meeting. Wei Wuxian didn't start the fight - the other side shot him first, and then attacked - but he definitely threw down. It's fiction, so it's hard to feel as upset about this as we would for real life characters, but thousands died in that fight. Really, all of our characters survived a rather nasty war... so even though the story doesn't show it they've all got blood on their hands.

Which brings me to the point, I suppose. Thousands die in what some people translate to the 'Massacre at Nightless City'. 

Is Wei Wuxian the one responsible? He was their main opponent. But... he didn't start the fight. Was it the responsibility of Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao, for manipulating events and painting Wei Wuxian a villain? All in their lust for power? Was it the cultivators themselves, who believed the lies and spread the gossip? Who wholeheartedly believed they were right, that they were the ones on the side of justice? 

You could go round and round assigning blame, or trying to divide it up and say that 45% was one and 20% another... but part of the beauty of this story is that it shows how pointless most of that is. There's plenty of blame to go around, and a lot of crappy things happened - now what?

The manipulators did wrong, but can you put all the blame on them? There will always be immoral people willing to justify whatever in the pursuit of power, surely they wouldn't have succeeded if others had asked the right questions, or insisted on proof. (This happened rather consistently ever since the end of the war, but stands out most significantly in the incident that first set Wei Wuxian at odds with the rest of society. They had won the war against the Wen, and the survivors were hunted down and put in work camps. For various reasons had a debt to a couple of Wen, and wound up visiting one of those camps in order to try and pay off that debt. What he found was that his own side was treating the prisoners badly... just as bad as the Wen they'd just fought a bloody war against. So even though he hated the Wen - who had destroyed his home, hurt his brother, thrown him into a rather horrible place to die, etc - he also had this debt to two of them, and could see that they weren't all bad. The people in the camps were NOT a threat. Old, civilians, even a toddler. He ends up killing some of the guards, breaking them free and taking them to live somewhere under his protection. The discussion conference about him shows that the cultivators all believe it was an unprovoked attack, the surviving guards claimed that the death of one detainee in particular was because he fell of a cliff - rather than being murdered as we'd learned earlier - and so of course to them Wei Wuxian seems out of control and a threat to all. We're not even sure whether that's a deliberate lie on Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao's part, or the guards coming up with a lie to protect themselves. Regardless, the Jin family didn't have any interest in finding out the truth and the rest of the cultivation world accepted their story without question.)

Should we be angry, then, at the general public? Is it their fault for believing and spreading gossip? For believing the manipulators when they outright lied? But if they were at fault - wasn't the death of thousands a bit extreme for punishment? 

That brings me to the point of all this - because there are real world parallels here. There are people who deliberately spread lies and try to manipulate the situation to their own favor. And there are people who believe those lies and take action based on those lies. 

The pandemic brings this home rather viscerally, to me at least. I had posted some months back that we could predict and prevent much of the death. We're now almost at 200,000 dead Americans and the vast majority of it did not have to happen.

Hundreds of thousands dead. In the real world, not some fictional fantasy. It's almost too terrible to comprehend. 

There's a definite urge to blame - to blame the people who minimized the threat and did everything they could to prevent people from taking sensible precautions. To blame the ones who turned this political, so that some people proudly act as though refusing to wear a mask is some great show of freedom and patriotism. To wonder how many of them believe their own BS, and are honestly just fools... and how many are knowingly and deliberately saying things they are fully aware are false.

To blame people - for being gullible and credulous and believing the BS.

There's plenty of blame to go around. You can even try tracing things back to earlier stages and blame China, though that's a bit like saying Wei Wuxian was responsible for the death of thousands because he rescued a few civilians from a work camp. (i.e. in the broader sense it can be true, but it misses a lot of the steps along the way where different choices would have effected the outcome.)

I have more to write on this, but it's long enough that I'll probably do a separate post. 

Still Alive

I haven't felt the urge to write a post, but figured I could give a quick update.

It's just...

Over a month ago I commented about how utterly predictable and preventable the loss of life from coronavirus is.

And yet here we are, our daily new case rate returning to ~30K, just like it was when New York was a major hotspot.

I don't expect it will be quite the same, yet. That 30K is spread across the entire US rather than one tremendous metropolis.

But things are beginning to get bad. I heard a twitter comment that Dallas hospitals are almost overwhelmed. The South and the West are steadily climbing.

And...

If I think about that, if I think about what I said before... about how this was entirely preventable...

Then I feel rage. 

So I don't think about it. (I have said my piece, tried to persuade those who were persuadable. My friends and family either already agree, or are probably not going to agree until something changes. It's not so much that I've given up as that I'm biding my time, though that decision has been made based on an instinct I'm not entirely sure I trust.)

I suppose it'd be easier to act as though the pandemic is a natural disaster.

Like a hurricane or flood. (Which, technically, is sort of true. But even though Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, we all understood that the poor management with regards to the levees and flood response was what made it a true disaster. And those things were entirely in our control.)

What was it Stalin said? 'One death is a tragedy, millions is a statistic'?

I never thought I would see the day where our own leadership acted like that. Uncaring, unconcerned with the lives of their citizens, and perfectly willing to convince people that it's not their poor leadership that's responsible for the loss. Just some unfortunate fate. Or divine punishment. Or the Chinese. Or a conspiracy or coup.

I...

I don't have any words right now.

Right now most people have close their minds, and we're seem set on the course we're on.

If things do get as bad as I fear, then I suspect a lot of things are going to change. I'm just not yet certain what shape those changes are going to take.

Update, Terrorism vs Insurgency, and Other Topics

California, Washington, and Oregon have apparently announced a pact, and the eastern states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are creating a regional working group to help coordinate their efforts against COVID-19.

Which is not unreasonable. (This, btw, is why I'm skeptical about efforts to get rid of government. You might get rid of whatever you currently call government, but the need for coordination/administration etc generally doesn't go away, and will take on the same form, albeit under a different name. Maybe you have a private 'mutual aid organization', which you all pay some membership fee to. Whether you call it 'mutual aid' or 'government', a 'membership fee' or 'taxes' it all tends to act the same in the end. But that's for a later discussion.)

But it sets the stage for quite an intense and uncertain future, because Trump (who apparently is now claiming he has 'absolute authority', after declaring "I don't take responsibility at all", and at other times claiming that the federal goverment was just a stopgap to states) is probably not going to take that too well.

Weird, that you can't have it both ways, isn't it? You can't neglect to do your job and then get upset when other people step in to fill the gaps.

But this is Trump, and every time he's been faced with a challenge he doubles down. He's petty and vindictive, and I have no idea what sort of crazy response he'll come up with, but I'm sure it'll be a doozy.

Right now... this has the potential to be a nothingburger, or to be a Very. Big. Deal. Indeed.

I'm not sure which way it'll go, though.

So anyways, here's the thing. The conversation I want to have has more to do with which sorts of things we would want, at what level. Like... public goods vs privatization, county vs. state. vs. federal. That sort of thing. My overall principle is to 'support the lowest level possible' and enable them to come up with their own solutions, but there's a heckuva lot of room to play around in that... and there are reasonable arguments to be made for placing certain things at a national level. (For example - as mobile as Americans can be, it makes sense to have some consistent education standards so that a kid transferring from Arizona to Connecticut - or vice versa - won't be on a completely different academic level.)

But I've got plenty of time to dig into that. Before doing so, I wanted to talk a little bit more about something else.

It's a mishmash of things I've come across over the years, and I'm not going to try and look up every little reference, so please excuse any mistakes.

Almost a decade ago, we were asked "what is the difference between terrorism and an insurgency."

It's a complicated question, hinging on how you define terrorists and insurgents, and I will leave aside that terrorism is a strategy or a tactic that may or may not be used by an insurgency, so it's not exactly a fair comparison. Here goes.

When you have a society, there are many decisions made... about who gets what. How resources are allocated, what laws are passed, and so on and so forth.

And there are always people who don't get what they want.

In a free marketplace of ideas, and a democracy, they can try to work within the system to make the changes they want. They can create a platform, run candidates, try to drum up support (and funding)...

But some ideas don't really catch on. (And - in systems that have ossified too much, or are too autocratic, the system may not be capable of changing, either.)

If this represents a genuine grievance, more and more people may join in... and an insurgency can grow. (In a democracy, it would show in candidates running on certain platforms, winning primaries and political positions at the expense of the establishment candidates. In the absence of a legitimate way of doing this within the system, if the issue is severe enough you may see an insurgency... a competing force for the resources of a government. They won't just be trying to fund military forces, they'll also be taking taxes from areas they control, and trying to take care of the people under their jurisdiction. Just like a government would.)

Terrorism... terrorism starts because their ideas weren't popular enough to catch on. They don't have the numbers. Don't have the support.

So they are trying to build support beyond what they otherwise would have. By doing attention-grabbing attacks, to draw in supporters who may otherwise not know they exist.

And by doing horrific attacks, so that when the government overreacts (and rounds up innocent people in a dragnet operation to capture the guilty), people who were perfectly content to go about their business realize that they can't afford to... and get radicalized, and (they hope) turn to the terrorists.

If they do build that level of support, they can become an insurgency... so there's a lot of crossover. The line between the two isn't always clear (and, well... you can have an insurgency without terrorist tactics, so it's not like this is 'the one and only path' a movement can take. Heck, there are also options for non-violent tactics, or insurgency targeting 'legimate' targets like government offices and military personnel, rather than civilians.)

What I wanted to talk about, though, was about the mindset leading towards terrorism. Because that is also a choice, and it's almost always tied to arrogance.

That is, in a free marketplace some ideas are just not going to catch on. Certain Christians believe that dancing is bad - had a whole movie on that - and yet dancing is still pretty popular, and it's unlikely that there would ever be enough popular support to ban it. Not on a large scale, at least.

But the people who believe this are not going to say "the vast majority of people don't agree with us, so maybe we're wrong."

Nope. They truly believe, in their heart of hearts, that they're in the right. And so they are faced with a choice - privately live their beliefs, and accept that the rest of society will never share them...

Or try to change society. Mayhap even try to force society to do 'the right thing', where 'the right thing' is 'that which I'm absolutely certain I know is best for you.'

Arrogance.

Compulsion. I do think that the Koran had that right, btw - that "there is no compulsion in religion."

If there is a God, I'm fairly sure He (or She) is more offended by attempts to compel people into doing what you think is best, then He is by people doing whatever it is in the first place.

But I digress.

The point is, there's a choice. A point where people either accept that they'll always be some weird minority (of which we have plenty. Amish that drive horses and buggies. Hasidic Jews with their particular styles of dress. Christians who decide to ban dance in their local city or county. Each able to live how they think is best, in their private life... but not trying to impose those choices on the rest of society), or decide that they're right and everyone else is wrong.

And when they - arrogantly - decide the latter, they have to explain away why they're not succeeding like they 'should'. And they'll argue that it's because their opponents are cheating, or lying, or whatever it takes to show that they're right and would win in any reasonably fair contest.

And so it's easy to start justifying doing whatever it takes to put their beliefs in practice.

Deliberately, knowingly, lying? Justified, if it helps defeat those nasty fill-in-the-blank, who have blocked you and opposed you and prevented you from building that perfect world you dream of.

There was a book, some while back, talking about the Wisdom of Crowds. About how, collectively, we can be wiser than we are individually. I think it's somewhat true, with caveats. Further studies showed how people could mess with that 'wisdom of crowds'. Could deliberately try to feed it false information, or skew things in one way or another.

Some do it just because it's fun to mess with people, ofc. Others do it... well, because they have a pre-determined answer that they're trying to force the crowd to choice.

Again, arrogance.

I went into all that because most of what I want to get into... well, it presupposes that fair and open marketplace of ideas, which I think tends to be allow the best ideas to come forth.

But we do need to be aware of the types of things that undermine it.

Of attempts, whether it's terrorism, disinformation, lying, bribing, blackmailing - anything other than a open and honest debate, that is used to arrogantly push a certain answer on the rest of us.

To use my previous pizza analogy, it's that one person who his absolutely certain their favorite pizza choice is the only possible pizza choice, and is willing to do whatever it takes to force that decision on everyone. 

Update, and More on Decision Making

News has been - mixed.

Still an awful lot of illness and death, though it does appear that enough of us have been staying home to help flatten the curve. I really like the graphics on this site, as I can play around with linear vs. logarithmic, as well as looking at the nation as a whole, specific states, and rates as adjusted to the population. (Speaking of, New York sucks up most of the attention - for good reason - and a bit on Louisiana, New Jersey, and follow up to Washington and California, but I don't seem to hear much about states like Connecticut or Massachusetts? Which seems to be getting hit rather hard for the size of their population?)

Anyways, yes... the logarithmic graphs do show that the rate of growth in the US is slowing. So of course we already have people who want to say it's all over, and asking when we can open back up.

Going back to the 'learning from other people's experience' bit I'd mentioned in a previous post, it looks like every state that starts relaxing their countermeasures has immediately had to tighten them back up. That is, if it's not accompanied by mass testing in order to know which areas are safe to ease restrictions on.

Basically, I won't believe it's time to open back up  until a) we have a vaccine or effective medical treatment b) enough people have recovered from the virus to give us herd immunity or c) we have widespread and easily accessible testing to catch any outbreaks and isolate them before they spread any further.

None of which seems to be happening yet, so whatever.

I do find it amusing, though, how state governors are stepping up to the plate and making it crystal clear that the presidency isn't actually as powerful as we make it out to be. I mean, Trump talks about ordering the country to open back up... but he only really ordered it to (partially) shut down after most of the governors had already done so. I guess he's doing a great job of shrinking the federal government and turning the clamor for states' rights into a real possibility. I just never expected that from an administration that has shown such authoritarian tendencies. I feel like there's a lesson there, somewhere? Something about incompetence empowering anyone willing to step up to the plate?

I don't know, we'll probably be years sorting out all the consequences of these last few months... and the next few, as well.

Anyways, I did want to add a little bit more to my analogy yesterday... on stakeholders, and pizza choices, and decision making.

I deliberately used the term 'stakeholders'. It came from a book on managing healthcare organizations that we used in school a decade ago, and I thought the material was applicable to all sorts of organizations. (That's the same one that talked about the problems with creating a blame-based culture, and how removing blame made it easier to fix problems. Like changing the coloring and/or size of pills so that it's harder to mix them up and give the wrong dose.) The book discussed how a good quality organization would take into account the needs of all the stakeholders - doctors, nurses, administrators, insurance companies, and of course patients and the medical needs of the community at large.

This stakeholder concept is important, I think. To bring it back to my pizza ordering analogy - every member of the group has a stake in the decision, and should be treated accordingly.

I consider certain strategies threatening to the whole, because they undermine that decision making process.

To continue with my pizza analogy, it's like if the majority of the group decided to 'screw the vegetarian, they can either eat what we like or starve' and insist on getting the meat lovers and supreme pizzas.

Or if one person said "Pepperoni is by far the superior pizza, you all are wrong. I'm going to make sure the order is pepperoni, because I know what's best."

It's not so much the policies or desires themselves, you see. It's the lack of empathy, the willingness to accept that anyone else's wishes matter. And it's the arrogance.

There are numerous examples, from both parties, but the most recent ones that spring to mind were the Republican attempt to create a coronavirus relief bill that did nothing to people who didn't pay any taxes. That is, people living off Social Security, disability, or just plain didn't earn enough to pay taxes that year - like college students - would get nothing.

I have heard people claim over the years that Republicans think the poor are lazy, and other such things, and I had sort of dismissed it as hyperpartisan hate. Or rather, I'm sure there are some isolated rich people who live in so much of a bubble that they honestly believe that, but I had thought it was just a small and isolated fraction and that the people forming policy would know better.

If there is nothing else the last few years have proven to me, it's that our system is far more fragile (and there is far greater rot) than I ever had believed.

It's not just about the bill itself, you see. It's that in the midst of the global pandemic they were seriously trying to save comparative pennies (when you consider how much they were willing to give to corporations and big business) by stiffing the least among us. Like they don't have any empathy at all, don't even see these people as human.

"Whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me".

I guess the Republicans would stiff Jesus, too.

The second one? The second one was when the North Carolina Republicans seriously tried passing legislation on 9/11 while the Democrats were out. I mean, it's not just the short-sightedness of the strategy...

It's that when you get so focused on defeating the 'other', when you start demonizing Democrats or Republicans and acting as though they are somehow unAmerican, you are forgetting that at least a third of your fellow citizens agree with and chose to elect these guys.

Like, there are clearly politicians and policies I don't agree with, and I definitely think some of them are BS-ing and conning their constituents, but I acknowledge that there are many Americans who see something worth voting for... and that we have to take their concerns seriously, and address them.

Their concerns may not be what the politicians claim they are, of course. I don't think Trump, for instance, would have gotten the support he had if the Democrats and Republicans hadn't shown they were in the pockets of our growing oligarchy, but that's a whole different story. The point is that catering to one third of the American population, and acting like another third is somehow the devil... is NOT a good thing for the free marketplace of ideas, or negotiating amongst stakeholders, or much of anything beyond the short term satisfaction of riling up your base and scoring a few cheap victories.

Maybe you get the sausage pizza of your dreams, but the cost and long term consequences are too high.

Pandemic Cooking

Since I pretty much live by myself, cooking...

Well, normally I might make something special on the weekend, that lasts well as leftovers and I can eat over the next week. Since my work office is next to a park, I generally brought something I could grab and go (and play pokemon during my lunch break. Except Friday, when I went out for lunch with some of my coworkers). And dinner was thus either the leftovers from whatever I made on the weekend, or something quick and easy I could alternate with it. See - here's the thing. When you live alone, well. It's a lot of work (and dishes) to make food for just one meal, so I'm more likely to cook a lot... but I can't eat all of that, so I tend to have leftovers. So I mostly try to pick foods that do well as leftovers. Like chili, which tends to get better as the flavors meld. 

Now, because of the pandemic, I'm home all day. I had seen posts discussing homemade sourdough bread, and initially resisted the idea of making my own, but the more I kept seeing the topic the more it sounded like a good idea. I didn't have any yeast (I think. I might, but I couldn't find it when I checked, so it might just be hidden away somewhere. Probably got old and bad by now, too) and the store was all out, but no worries! The internet shows you how to start your own. I happened to have a small thing of raisins, so I just had to get them wet and add some flour and patiently wait a day or two and voila! Yeasty bread starter.

I had been worried the first day, 'cause it clearly wasn't acting like it had any active yeast in it. Looked more like a flour paste, without any of the rising or bubbles it's supposed to have. But later on the second day I could definitely see the yeast in action. I went ahead and made some bread (not sourdough - sourdough has to be fed and maintained for a while, to get all the flavorful soury yeasts more time to produce), and put the rest of it in the fridge to slow the growth. I can only eat so much bread at a time, and one loaf was going to be plenty. I'll bring out the refrigerated one and start another round when I'm ready.

Bread was tasty, and turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but good.

Anyways, I normally do a weekly grocery trip, mostly for the fresh fruits and veggies since they just don't last all that long. Or, these days, I do a weekly order for delivery...

But I decided not to do that this week. It feels like this is a good week to take advantage of the stuff I already had, you know?

It's kind of interesting trying to figure out what to make with what I already have on hand... normally when I do decide on something big, I'll run out to the store to get whatever I don't normally stock, and so there's things that have been on my shelf or in my freezer for quite a while.

Like, this weekend I decided to make a chicken broccoli macaroni bake, and use up the half a box of macaroni. It turned out pretty nice, though I made two pans and froze the second one for later. It also makes for something quick and easy I can heat up for lunch, though I don't really need anything 'quick' when I'm just chilling at home, I guess.

Anyways, I'd also had some ground beef and I was trying to figure out  what to make with it. I wasn't feeling any of the more standard dishes... the chicken bake had enough pasta in it already, I didn't want to make more. I had debated making a dirty rice of some sort, but really that'd be better with fresh bell peppers and onions or something, and I didn't have it on hand.

But while looking at the rice options, I noticed an almost empty box of barley, and it had a nice recipe on the back for a beef and barley soup. I didn't follow the instructions exactly, of course, but I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. :) I had some beef broth, a bag of frozen carrot slices, half a bag of frozen spinach, diced tomatoes, some onion, and various spices and seasonings. All in all, worked out well.

Finished off the last bit of my homemade bread, too. Maybe I'll start prepping another batch this weekend, depending on the weather - it's always nicer to bake when it's cool out. Seems silly to bake in the summer. Having the oven heat up the house when you're running the air conditioner is a bit counterproductive.

As for the news - well, it's all still pretty awful, though there are many people who still refuse to believe it. I don't know, I find myself second guessing myself and hoping they're right.

Like that stupid hydroxychloroquine the president keeps pushing. The science behind it seems mixed, with some case studies showing no real effect, and others reporting that it helps. I'd prefer to leave it up to the scientists, of course, but I get that people are worried and desperate and really want to have some sort of hope.

It just seems all too typical, though, that this medicine can have some serious side effects (heart and eyesight), and pushing it when there are other promising treatments will divert resources from those other options, and I find myself hoping that Trump is lucky enough to be right about it... because the idea that people who need the medicine for things like lupus might suffer, and at least a few people will suffer those side effects out of desperation, all for a treatment that doesn't actually work and takes up resources that could have been used to find something else, faster... is just too awful to bear.

There's trying to bring hope, and then there's totally bullshitting people. I have my suspicions about what is what, but right now everything is a mess of information and misinformation. I guess I can't blame those who want to believe there's a treatment, I just hope it's more effective than that case study indicated.

Coronavirus, Science, and Faith

Someone on social media referred to the anecdote of a man who refused life-saving assistance (a longer version here), claiming that God will save him, only to die.... and when he got to heaven and asked God why He didn't save him, God said "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you expect?" 

It was funny, though, because the person telling the story clearly thought it took place during Hurricane Katrina... and I know I've heard the anecdote long before that.

I was thinking of this, and the Battle of Hattin, which I've talked about before. I wanted to add a little bit of something new this time, though, so here goes:

Doubting Thomas is a figure in the Bible who refused to believe that Jesus was resurrected until he saw Jesus for himself, and was able to touch him (and his wounds). Growing up Catholic, well...

I always understood the implication of "don't be a Doubting Thomas. Don't insist on proof for your faith." After all, blessed are they who have not seen (for themselves) and still believe.

But I was thinking about it, I don't know, some months or a year ago?, and there's a very different lesson you can take from the story. 

Even though Jesus said 'blessed are they who have not seen', he also said that Thomas was blessed. 

That is to say, Jesus answered Thomas's skepticism, was okay with having to prove himself. It wasn't like he said Thomas was going to be cast into the fires of hell for doubting. No.

Thomas was also blessed. 

Sure, I think we generally took the implication that people who didn't require proof were more blessed... but is being blessed a matter of degree? Or is it binary? You're either blessed or you aren't, right? Or do the non-doubters somehow get more... I dunno... the equivalent of a bigger house in heaven.

And really, when you look back on the Bible, you see similar responses throughout. Sara laughed at the thought that she'd get pregnant, and God did not smite her for her temerity.

More problematic was the story of Zechariah, who doubted he and his wife could bear a child, and was struck dumb until the birth as proof. Like - was that punishment for doubting? Or the sign he asked for?

Anyways, I bring all that up because that mentality is, I think, at the heart of the evangelical willingness to continue acting in risky ways even if it means catching COVID-19.

It's sort of this 'God will protect me, I will not doubt Him, and believing in science and expecting proof shows lack of faith' mentality, which comes (I think) with a certain level of arrogance. Well, that and other things. Like the story I opened with, of the man who died in a flood, they are willfully ignoring the current equivalent of rescue boats and helicopters. Trusting in some sort of divine miracle to rescue them from their own actions.

Like the Battle of Hatin shows, I don't think God saves us from our own stupidity. I mean, He gave us brains for a reason, gave us the ability to plan and think... and if we go ignoring basic things (like making sure we have adequate water before fighting in the middle of a desert), He's not going to step in and save us. 

The sad thing is, there is a large part of our population that really does seem to expect that sort of thing. And they'll go to church on Sunday, and particularly Easter Sunday next week, and someone attending will probably have COVID-19, and will probably spread it to other attendees, and it'll be just like that choir in Washington but on a much larger scale.

It is completely predictable, entirely avoidable, and will probably happen anyway.

More Coronavirus Guesswork

As I said before, you really ought to talk to an epidemiologist about what to expect now…

But since I can’t help thinking about the possibilities myself, I’ll just go ahead and lay out some of my guesses here.

 

The first thing to note is this – we have no idea what the scope of the problem is, largely because we haven’t been testing nearly enough.  As South Korea has shown, a large group of carriers don’t show any symptoms at all, so they can spread COVID-19 without being aware that they’re doing so.

If we had locked down the relevant states as soon as they’d had a case of ‘community spread’, and then tested the s*** out of everybody, we might have been able to get ahead of the transmission chain (once we’d lost track of it enough to get community spread in the first place), and perhaps could have limited where we needed to shelter in place.

But that ship has sailed, it’s water under the bridge, <insert cliché making the point that it’s got nothing to do with today’s problems. Mostly because it has now spread far enough and wide enough that there’s almost no hope of limiting it to a few ‘known hotspots’>

We have no idea of the scope of the problem.

However… There are ways of trying to get an estimate of it. In particular, if the mortality rate is actually fairly consistent (taking into account demographics like age and obesity, as well as increased mortality when hospitals are overwhelmed) then we can make a few educated assumptions.

Namely that South Korea, which did test the s*** out of everyone, has the most reliable data. That is, if their mortality rate is .6 or .7%, then you can argue that most other nations have a similar rate… and it only looks higher because we’re not testing enough to catch everyone. (That’s why I used their rates in my best of the worst case scenario earlier).  It’s not an exact measurement, of course, for all the reasons I listed above, and more. That is, in addition to demographic differences and healthcare resource availability, some people may be dying of the coronavirus without being counted. It’s just designated ‘pneumonia’, or ‘flu’.

Still, I’m just running the numbers to get some sense of scale, not to make a 100% accurate prediction. So let’s roll with it…

 

Currently, as of 2 Apr 2010, we have about 5000 deaths from COVID-19. If we take South Korea’s rate of .6%, then we can calculate how many people are likely to be infected:

 

If 5000/x = .006, then 5000/.006 = x, which is ~833,333 people. (It’s math. You can also say 5000/x = 6/1000; so 5000*1000 = 6x, so 5,000,000 = 6x, so 5,000,000/6 = x… all of which still comes to 833,333 people.)

 

In other words, we probably have around 800 thousand people who have been infected with COVID-19, even though we’ve only tested enough to confirm 215,000 of them.

 

The other thing worth noting, is that if it really takes around two weeks for people to show symptoms, then what this really is saying is that two weeks ago we had 800,000 people infected with COVID-19. There’s various discussions on what the rate of infection is, and when we double, but some of that is also tied in with the utter lack of testing, and the growth in positive cases as we’ve started rolling out more tests, so who the heck really knows? Let’s just say, for the sake of assumption, that the rate of infection normally doubles every week. The confirmed cases are more like doubling every two or three days, but that could be because of all the issues I listed. In the interests of another best/worse type scenario, I’ll just go with ‘doubles every week’.

 

That means we could actually have 1.6 million or even 3.2 million people who have been infected already.

 

Now, this is where the guesswork really comes in to play. Because of course most of the cases started at places where we have travelers from other infected areas (airports, seaports… and it’s no surprise that most of the cases started it places like Washington state, California, New York… and Chicago.)

 

But our first case of confirmed ‘community spread’ came around Feb 26^th, over a month ago.

 

So where are those 1.6 million or so infected people? By now, pretty much everywhere.

 

Oh, it’s probably still primarily in urban areas. But I live in a town of around 230,000 people and as of today we have 38 confirmed cases. Granted, we’re a university town that probably has quite a bit of direct travel to Chicago (and overseas), so maybe that’s not much of a surprise? We’re probably a couple of weeks behind Chicago in terms of the timeline, and thanks to our governor and mayor we enacted countermeasures early enough that I’m hopeful it won’t get too bad.

 

Because you have to figure that all the nearby, more rural, smaller towns? There’s probably people from there that come in to the ‘big city’ for one reason or another. And they definitely have a better chance of NOT catching COVID-19 now that we’re limiting how much we’re out and about.

 

Again, I don’t have any real numbers on how fast this thing spreads. You def. want to talk to a professional on that. But it makes sense to me that we would see spread from areas (like Seattle, or Chicago) out into the smaller towns, and eventually even into places like North Judson, Indiana (which has all of 1,739 people.) We’ve had a month of community spread, so whether it’s already done that or not depends on all the various factors I keep saying you should talk to an expert on.

 

What we can say for sure is that the actions we all, as well as our state governors have (or have not) taken, will play a big role in how fast that happens.

 

I came across another article on social media, from an epidemiologist, discussing what’s likely to happen next. I don’t recall all of it, but he made a point about how some of our actions impacts the success (or failure) in reducing transmission.

He pointed out that each family acts like a single unit, so if one of your kids has a play date with another… it’s as though your entire family has interacted with that entire family, and if they’ve had a play date with another kid, then that entire family has also interacted with theirs… and with yours when you do your play date.

 

In other words, if people are still meeting up with each other – even if it’s in smaller groups – the virus is still going to spread. It’s just going to spread through smaller networks. And, perhaps, at a slower rate (if the kids normally play together at school every day, and it took three days to set a play date, that’s a three day delay in transmission.)

 

As people have been saying, what good is it to tell everyone that schools are closed and they have to work from home, if they still schedule a play date or go out to dinner with a couple of friends or (for the highest chance of mass infection) still go to church?

 

A month, maybe two, of community spread. And it’s already spread to medium/small sized cities like mine.

Which means in the next month or two I think we’ll really start to see the impact of our collective decisions on social (or really, physical) distancing.

Coronavirus Update

So the US now has the most coronavirus (shouldn't we call it the 'bat flu'? I mean, we had 'avian flu' and 'swine flu', and people are clearly looking for a name that isn't 'coronavirus' or 'COVID-19'... why not 'bat flu'?) cases in the world. 105,052 as of midnight, according to one of the tracking sites. And there's been a bit of a debate this week, still, about whether things are as bad as epidemiologists say... and whether 'the cure is worse than the disease', and whether we need to open up the economy, and a bunch of other things.

Which makes me furious, so let me lay out all the reasons why.

I've seen various arguments going around that 'it's not really all that bad', though most of the arguments saying that have some serious flaws to them. I want to go through my own thinking on this matter, with the caveat (of course) that I'm not an epidemiologist.

So... the US has over 300 million citizens. Technically it's more like 327 million, but 300 is a nice even number to work with so it's what I've been using for my own calcuations.

I suppose not everyone will get infected, depending on where you are and how isolated you are (which is why these calculations will change depending on how good we are at social distancing.) Right now I'm trying to look at what will happen if we don't do much of anything - if we all go back to our normal routines, reopen businesses, etc. I suspect, in that case, that we'd still see a good three quarters get infected, but I'll be generous and say only half get the disease.

So let's say 150 million get infected. Now, South Korea has done the most testing, so they're numbers are probably the most accurate in terms of mortality rate (as long as there's adequate healthcare. Ventilators, oxygen tanks, etc. This is a best case scenario where everyone gets the best treatment.)

South Korea has a mortality rate of 0.6%. That's only part of the story, though, because many people still need hospitalization (and ventilators, and oxygen) even though they will survive. Numbers are still hard to get right now, but let's say about 14% are severely affected and need hospitalization.

150,000,000 x .006 = 900,000
150,000,000 x .14 = 21,000,000

So we are talking, best case scenario, 900,000 deaths. That's almost a million deaths, but since people think this has been overhyped already, I won't try rounding that up. 900,000. And 21 million people who will need ventilators/oxygen tanks/hospitalization.

Every argument that claims it's not so bad, that tries to say the death toll would only be in the thousands, is misleading. (I want to know where they get their numbers. Are they assuming only a third of the population catches it? Do they think the mortality rate is really .04%? How are they figuring it?)

Every.

Single.

One.

The ones talking about 60,000? Even 600,000? I want to know where they get that number from. And it better not be 'the flu', because with flu shots and some level of immunity, the flu is not going to go through our population as fast as a new disease that nobody has immunity to.

That's not even talking about the hospitalization aspect. 21 million.

Million.

21 million people who will need oxygen and ventilators and nurses and doctors...

And we apparently have about 924,107 hospital beds. Many of which are already occupied. We are short on hospital beds by a couple of orders of magnitude.

I'm using that to give a sense of the scale of the problem, because it's not a count of ventilators or oxygen tanks... and without proper availability of masks and protective equipment, a lot of medical professionals will also get sick... which also means we'll be short doctors and nurses and so on and so forth.

Which is where the real problem starts. Because South Korea's mortality rate comes from having the ability to give everyone the best treatment, but if you don't have the capacity to treat those 21 million people (who can and would survive with treatment), then they will die.

The mortality rate will be much worse than .6%, not because the new coronavirus is that deadly, but because we weren't able to provide the treatment they needed.

This is why flattening the curve is such a big deal. Because we need to make sure we have the resources to adequately treat everyone, and if we don't a lot of people will die completely unnecessary deaths.

So much of it depends on when it hits, and whether it's spread out or happens all at once. Do nothing, and the hospitals are overwhelmed and the death toll grows. Not just from people who catch COVID-19... but from all the other people who need medical care when the hospitals are overwhelmed. Have a heart attack? Get in a car accident?

Good luck getting the care you need.

I've run the numbers to my own satisfaction, though I'm sure this is an oversimplified example and would recommend you contact a credible epidemiologist for a more accurate analysis. Like I said, I'm not trying to take into account counter-measures like social distancing. I also don't know how likely it is that only half the population will catch it... this thing seems ridiculously contagious, especially if it can survive on metal for days.

But I call BS on almost every argument (and there have been a lot in the news this past week) trying to say that its not that bad.

And I wonder about that. About the people making those arguments, and how many places are publishing those arguments and pushing that story line.

Because I can't tell if it's just denial (I understand that. I don't want to believe it will be that bad, either.) or if it's something more sinister.

I can't tell if the people pushing these arguments genuinely believe it, or if they really don't care.

Which gets into the second part of this. We've had a couple of people try arguing that 'it's better to let a few of us die, than to ruin the economy'.

I'll highlight two of the most memorable; the Texas Lt Governor who argued that grandparents would be willing to die for the sake of their children and grandchildren, and Glenn Beck - who said he would rather die than kill the country.

First of all - the economy is not synonymous with the country. Or, to put this another way, Thor: Ragnarok got it exactly right when they said Asgard "is not a place, it's a people."

America is not a place, and it's not it's economy. It's a people. Every single American is precious, something I didn't think we'd have to say to the supposedly 'pro-life' faction.

I don't want to minimize the pain and frustration of economic turmoil. There are a lot of people out there right now, scared and worried because they've been laid off, or can't work and don't have enough savings to wait for things to blow over.

But our starting point has to be "how do we take care of our people". Or, to put it in Biblical terms, 'how can we be good shepherds'.

Every single one of the pundits arguing that it's okay to just let people die has shown some serious moral failings, a completely skewed perspective, and I don't trust their judgment in the slightest.

There are things we can do to address the economy, and the people who survive the next few months will eventually recover. The dead will not.

The pressure to reopen the economy, if it's not coming from a place of denial, shows a crass disregard for the lives of the American people. And for what?

So many of the ones arguing for that seem more concerned, tbh, with the stock market... and with regaining the flow of profits they're used to... then it is with the average American.

The only reason why we can't all sit tight for a few weeks -

Well, okay. There's a couple of reasons. a) people need to eat, so unless they've stocked up enough to get through those weeks, they'll have to go out to buy groceries and whatnot. And we'll still need people to produce the food they need, so there still has to be some flow of goods. b) people need to pay their bills. If they've got rent due, they have to have a paycheck. And if they're living paycheck to paycheck, with no paid time off and no sick time, and their workplaces have shut down, then they're screwed.

And yes, it will be hard for businesses to stay in business for similar reasons. They've got rent to pay, business loans to pay, etc.

Which is why I've seen people arguing for policies that, when you put them all together, act as though we can put the economy on ice.

That is, tell everyone not to collect rent/mortgage/loans during this time of crisis (so those bills don't come due... with no penalties) and give people the resources to stock up on food and whatnot so they can get through this.

If you do that, well. Businesses 'shouldn't' go out of business, and can pick back up when we allow people back out. People 'shouldn't' starve. Landlords 'shouldn't' be screwed by the lack of money coming in, because they're bills shouldn't be collected either.

It's like flash freezing everything, and giving everyone enough resources to buy the groceries they  need to stay home.

Would it work? Idk... I'd again encourage you to go find an economist (or really, two or three. Plus some business leaders, small and large, and some average Americans and some financial experts).

I do, however, think that's a better idea than pushing this 'the economy will die, so you all have to go back to work and we don't care how many of you die in the process" policy.

Systemic Thinking, and Other Things

I've been thinking about - well, lots of things.

Economics, capitalism, the failures made evident by COVID-19... oligarchs and social dilemmas, and various other odds and ends.

I might go into some of that, another time. Because I think, fundamentally, there's something else to be addressed first.

Systemic vs... idk, individualistic?

Let me explain.

When something bad happens, some people shrug and say 's*** happens', and others say 'why did this happen? What can we do to prevent it from happening in the future?'

This is not meant to say one way is better than the other. As with all things, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. The disadvantage to just shrugging and accepting something is that it can (and probably will) happen again. To someone else.

But as anyone who used to climb trees as a kid, and feels sad knowing so many trees have their lower limbs cut off to make it 'safe' and keep kids today from doing the same, there are disadvantages to handling everything systemically.

First, it gives the false sense that you can somehow 'put padding on all the harsh corners of the world'. It means you focus more on making the world itself safer, instead of teaching the resilience, decision-making, and know-how that allows people to navigate safely regardless of the risk. (This is what many on the right get at, when they complain about lawsuits for failures in common sense or attempts to control speech instead of making people less susceptible to the message. Plus there's a bit of paternalism, an "I know better than you and will make sure you make the 'right' choice" tied up, here.)

As I typically say - both sides have good points, and where I fall on any particular issue depends. It's true that there are systemic changes we can make, changes that will reduce the chances of injury or death... and if we can, then choosing not to seems irresponsible.

But there's also something to be said for making people responsible for themselves, and for letting people make their own decisions. Letting them decide for themselves what risks they're willing to take.

This pandemic, btw, puts those issues in stark relief. If a Gen Z college kid evaluates the risks and decides its worth it to go on spring break, is it paternalistic and controlling to force them to stay home?

Or is the good of the larger public - the ability to 'flatten the curve' and ensure hospitals aren't hit with demand all at the same time - enough to justify it?

I'm not going to explore that issue right now, because this post isn't about answering that so much as it is about framing the way we look at the issue, and how we think about it.

Because this is true for a lot of other things, as well. Like healthcare, racism, student loan debt, and a lot of other things.

We can do a "5 Why's" on any of them, we can explore the systemic issues on all sorts of levels -

Or we can shrug and say "you agreed to that debt when you signed the loan agreement. Nobody owes you anything, and if you get sick and can't pay your medical bills too bad. And racism exists, but I'm not racist and if you just showed the cops some respect and don't commit any crime you'll be fine. What's the big deal?"

We can all choose to socially distance ourselves, hoping that we can slow the spread and prevent the hospitals from getting overwhelmed... so that everyone who catches the disease has the best chance of surviving it. And we can use the powers of the federal government to get businesses churning out masks and ventilators and PPE... And we can ask ourselves why testing isn't widely available, and why this disease spread so fast and so quickly, and why it's so much worse here than in a place like South Korea -

Or we can say "it's a virus, s*** happens. Let's not ruin the economy over it."

Coronavirus Update

I am considering restricting how often I look at COVID-19 news, because I am generally obsessing over it and I don't think it's good for me.

Maybe if (when?) things get bad enough that we no longer have a partisan divide over whether or not there's a problem... Idk.

I am very, very grateful that I have the job I do, and that I can work from home. Primarily because that's a lot less stress to deal with, but also because it means I have something to keep me busy most of the work week.

This has been my first full week working at home, btw, and it's been interesting. In some ways it reminds me of when I was studying for my degree, since I did it all online, but it's also... different. School work was less tied to a schedule, or rather I was able to create my own schedule entirely.

My state has issued a stay-at-home order, which for the most part I agree with. But (again), I don't have to stress over losing my job because of this. The fear and uncertainty everyone is feeling is understandable.

I've heard some people argue that the economic impacts may be worse than the disease, and idk about that. What I do know is that people who are alive can recover, eventually. But our system, which means many Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck with no safety cushion, means there's a serious risk that all the people who aren't getting paid right now will be unable to afford food if this goes on too long. Clearly, there are things good leaders will do to address that... but I don't want to derail this by discussing what's being proposed in Congress right now.

It's crazy, though. In the absence of strong national leadership each state is sort of doing their own thing. California, Washington (state, not DC), New York... and Illinois seem to be taking the most pro-active stances.

And then you get morons like that guy from Kansas who said they don't have a COVID-19 problem because there's so few Chinese in their state. 

Like - Hellooooooo? It's been spreading within the states for a couple of weeks already? Those first few cases of community spread (I think towards the end of February) were my first big indicators that this was NOT going to go the way avian flu and swine flu did. It meant we'd completely lost track of the chain of transmission, and had absolutely no idea who did or didn't have it any more.

And since many people don't show any symptoms, it can pass from one asymptomatic person to another, and then just pop up somewhere else out of the blue.

Does Kansas have truck stops? People who visit relatives in other states? Students who go to college in other states?

Then you, too, probably have COVID-19 cases in your state, and denial just means that you're going to be caught completely off guard when people start needing medical attention for it.

The urban/rural divide is something to watch here, too. Because I think it spreads first to urban areas, ofc, and can spread to more people because of the population density... but that just means it will take longer to penetrate rural areas. And given how remote those rural areas are, and how far they are from medical support, it can actually be pretty devastating there as well.

Maybe. I'm not an expert, so what do I know?

I hope we're all overreacting, and that in a month this will all seem like some sort of fever dream.

Anyways. I've been thinking about how to handle the political situation, and social media, and all the misinformation out there.

Or rather, I've been feeling my way into my own policy, but it also depends on how busy I am and how much energy I have.

See, here's the thing. I think the facts on the ground will speak for themselves, so I don't really want to engage in someone willfully wrong. Like, we'll know soon enough, right?

But sometimes I do think it's important to speak out, because you never know who might be listening, who might decide not to go to a movie, or out for dinner, or what have you.

And it is important not to let misinformation pass unchallenged.

And then there's the issue of blame, which I have mixed feelings on.

Or rather, there's more than enough blame to go around, and it generally doesn't help matters. It's like a discussion we had, years ago, on how to manage healthcare organizations. You don't want to be too focused on blame, because that leads to people trying to hide things and cover them up. You want to keep the focus on identifying problems and coming up with systemic solutions for preventing them from happening again.

For example, let's say someone gave the wrong meds (or wrong dosage). If you focus on blame, they try to hide the mistake. If you focus on systemic change, you might look at what happened and decide to color code the medicine. Or do something to distinguish them by shape or size... anything to help make it easier for tired and exhausted nurses to know right away if they've got the right medicine.

So... the blame game is only useful to a certain extent. Or rather, the blame game is never useful, but you do need an honest assessment of mistakes made if you want to prevent them from happening again - so analysis of what went wrong is important. Just... don't tie it to blame.

This is hard, because every time I see someone try changing the narrative, shifting the blame, and obfuscating responsibility when lives are on the line it makes me really, really mad.

I want their feet held to a fire, I want everyone to know that their awful decisions led to the death of their loved ones, and I want them to lose all political support.

But... I know that's the typical in-group vs out-group, outsiders are all the enemy and must be destroyed, type of thinking.

Not helpful.

So I'm focusing mostly on challenging misinformation when it's being spread - if I have the time and energy - but not trying to get people (especially people determined to believe there's nothing wrong) to see what a disaster certain decisions have been.

But... I'm worried. Because I've already seen people doing the 'oh, it's a virus. Nobody can control it, it's like an Act of God' argument. Which completely misses the effect certain decisions have on the spread of said viruses.

I'm also worried because, well...

Fear brings out the worst in people.

Time for Another Update

The last day (and really, week) has been surreal.

Concern about the new coranavirus, COVID-19, has grown. Last Tuesday my company declared a sitewide day of working from home, and yesterday they told us all to start working from home.

For a minimum of two weeks.

On the one hand, as the links I've posted before show, I totally get it. I'm also kind of pleased to see my company taking such proactive steps.

On the other hand, despite my analysis of the situation, it still doesn't feel real.

It's March now. The days are getting longer, and despite today's snow the weather is getting nicer. Sprint is normally such a hopeful time. A renewal, of sorts.

And yet there's this big cloud looming over everything.

Even though, so far as I can tell, only three things will prevent the worst (a vaccine, the possibility that warmer weather will slow the spread, and measures like 'social distancing', working from home, cancelling meetings, etc.) so far things are still pretty normal. Well, other than panic buying and a run on toilet paper.

The truth is, I hope I'm wrong. I hope what I expect doesn't happen, and that in a month or two we look back and laugh at our collective foolishness.

I just can't make myself believe that's what's going to happen, though. I don't see any reason why we'll somehow (magically) avoid what has happened in China, or Italy. Not with the slow and modest measures we've taken. Not with so little testing that we have no idea how widespread the problem is. Not with a good third of the population still saying "it's just the flu. You're all overreacting."

I suspect that a lot of things are going to change, soon.

I hope it's not too bad, ofc. Hope the worst fears aren't realized.

Guess I'll find out for myself soon enough.