Supply Chain Security

Seems like a very good and worthwhile thread -

https://twitter.com/TProphet/status/1239329139921833985?s=19

Captain's Log - 14032020

I saw something on Twitter asking people to keep a journal - for future historians, I guess. I know they meant a physical one, but it made me think that I ought to do more to capture current events.

My town had our first confirmed case of COVID-19 today, by the way. And our state governor has said that all restaurants and bars will close as of Monday evening.

So... yeah. Still a lot of uncertainty. Or rather, we still have a large group of people that don't really take this seriously, and I think even the ones that do aren't truly ready for it.

Me included.

It's funny. I mean, plagues have been a topic of interest since forever. I have a friend who had been pretty interested in the history of the Black Death. And I can remember reading Albert Camus' book The Plague (though it was so long ago I don't really remember the details.)

Of somewhat more interest, I had downloaded and read part of someone's account of living (in London, I think?) during an outbreak of plague. I forget when, where, and why... but it was interesting reading. I had this idea of people dying left and right, but here's this guy mostly just going about his day. Journaling about parish deaths, about how they suspected it was plague even though the church reported it as something else. He talked about how some of his friends decided to flee the city for their more remote lands. (Something I think was fairly common back then.)

I never expected to be living through anything like this, myself. I know, this isn't technically the plague. It's also not as lethal, so I'm not living in mortal fear of catching it. (For all I know, my slight too-minor-to-even-really-call-it-a-cold symptoms mean I could have it right now. That slight feeling in the throat. The occasional cough I started having this morning. It's not like I'd be able to get a test for it, so it mostly just reinforces how hard it is to take this thing seriously. If it weren't for the current situation, what I have is so minor I probably would be out and about.)

I've read the reports from Italy. More recently, one from a doctor in Seattle. I don't see any reason why we're somehow going to be different.

And yet I still was going to do something with my Little this weekend. Ended up not doing it, thankfully, as I'd begun to have doubts on how wise that would be.

The reports are coming in faster now, but it's not yet to the point where our healthcare system is breaking. Except, perhaps, in Seattle.

The lack of leadership from the federal government means that each state (and city, and county) is handling this their own way. Some states (like mine) are locking things down. Others... aren't.

It'll be interesting to see how much of a difference that makes. Like the article going around, comparing two cities and their differing reactions to the 1918 outbreak.

Still, though, I see the comments on social media.
"Overhyped." "Media driven panic." "Just the flu."

I'm not sure it's worth trying to persuade the ones saying things like this, though I occasionally try. There's a lot of speculation about what it would take to make them reevaluate those claims.

Unfortunately, it probably won't happen unless things as bad a I fear... which is why I keep saying that I hope I'm wrong. Even if it means they continue believing BS.

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.

Coronavirus

This article matches my own analysis almost completely -

https://ryanavent.substack.com/p/difficult-times

And I so very, very badly hope that we're wrong. 

It seems so crazy to think, right now. To see the weather turn nice, people out and about, and feel this looming over us. 

I don't want to accept the conclusion. I want to essentially laugh about all this in another two weeks, or month...

But I also recognize that urge to dismiss things I don't want to hear. 

And right now, not so much because the disease is all that bad, but for the reasons listed here (slow response, little testing, community spread, a system that disincentivizes staying home sick) I think it's going to get bad.

Very, very, bad. 

And worse, unnecessarily so. 

Coronavirus, cont.

I have debated what more to write about coronavirus...

I hope it all blows over. 

Of course I do, I don't want people to suffer. 

But I have no confidence at all in our current leadership. 

They seem more worried about the stock market. And politics. And getting re-elected...

To bring up a religious reference (which I like doing, mostly because they misuse it so much. Not trying to proselytize to anyone, really)... They're not being good shepherds.

A good shepherd would be more concerned about, you know, people's lives, and less about preserving their own power. 

I hope it all blows over, but right now I feel I have to bite my tongue a lot. 

Like, panic seems premature... But I've been following the news on this, and we're seeing community spread, and not near enough testing, and too many people are dismissive for political reasons. The response is being bungled, and we can all see it happening in real time. 

If you choose to look. 

And that's the part that sucks. Because if it does get out of hand, it didn't have to be that way. 

There's an urge to try and scream the alarm, but as with so much of our political world today - you either already get it, or don't want to. 

Besides, maybe I'm being overly concerned. I mean, the gist of what I'm reading is that it's more about trying to slow the spread so hospitals don't get swamped than anything else. I have no idea how bad that could get, and I'm mostly more concerned about supply chain failures. 

Or rather, I don't want people to die unnecessarily and making sure hospitals aren't swamped is the best way of giving everyone the greatest chance of surviving... But most people are only going to get mildly ill, it seems, so the greatest impact on the majority will be the second and third order effects, which are always hard to predict. 

That is, problems that come from activities meant to slow that spread, like quarantines... And consequences of needing medical treatment when facilities are swamped. So supply chain disruption, effects of not having people doing certain tasks, and possible delays in medical treatment if facilities are swamped.

But Idk. I guess we'll all find out soon enough. 

Coronavirus

Lots of stuff going around on the coronavirus, I'm not sure how much I want to add to that. There's a lot we don't know right now. (I do recommend trying to do at least a little preparation, like stocking up on non-perishable items that might come in handy if supplies are unavailable).

I wanted to post instead about what this virus makes crystal clear - which is that the systems and structures we create have a great deal to do with what happens.

For example - when people live paycheck to paycheck, don't have paid time off, can't do their job from home, and have to worry about large out-of-pocket medical expenses (like a large quantity of employees) there are immense incentives to come to work even when sick, and to avoid going to the doctor if it's at all possible.

In other words, such a system is practically tailor made to spread a disease like the coronavirus. 

I saw talk about a similar problem on Twitter - its apparently really, really hard to stock up on your prescription medications.

I do hope things don't get too bad, of course. But as they say - "hope for the best, but plan for the worst" 

Social Media Policies

I had a couple of discussions on Facebook over the last month or so, and was debating writing out some of my reasons for handling it the way I have.

It's too long to do in Facebook itself, mostly drawing on various experiences over the years, so... I dunno. I think I'll just start typing and see what comes out. I'll probably cover things I've talked about in other posts again, but it's sort of necessary to bring it all together.

Let's see...

Recent articles made me think I ought to go back farther on this one, to something I did as an undergraduate. This was back before 9/11, back when we were doing 'Military Operations Other Than War'. When we'd had the Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia, and were sending troops to Bosnia, and had some stuff going on with Haiti.

I wanted to write a paper, I forget what the thesis was... I don't think I actually got a good grade on it, tbh... but reading about Bosnia really shaped some of my thinking.

At the time, everyone seemed to think it was "ancient hatreds flaring up", but that didn't really make sense. They'd been living peaceably together for a while. Intermarried. Hosted the Olympics.

People don't just wake up one day and decide to start killing their neighbors over something that happened 500 years ago. One of my references gave a rather disturbing timeline. Iirc, it talked about how certain radio stations started it. Spread messages arguing that their particular ethnic group (or religious group, I could go look it up but I don't think the details actually matter. It's like my earlier post with the allegory of the long spoons. It's easy to destroy trust, doesn't matter which group identity you're talking about) was being discriminated against. Targeted.

The author said it was as though every radio station and TV station had been taken over by the KKK. And then there was an uptick in people arming themselves... and when the government got nervous and tried to crack down on it, it was easy for those stirring up trouble to say "See! See! They're coming for you!"

Four or five years (and 100,000 deaths) later, and what had been a rather mixed region was now divided.

I brought it up because apparently, in some quarters, arrogant fools seem to think the Bosnian genocide is a 'success'. They got their 'pure' state....

A weak one. But I guess they think it's better to be the big fish in a small pond, then a small fish in the ocean? (Seriously... Every. Single. Powerful. State. has had to deal with multi-culturalism and multi-ethnicity. Romans. Habsburgs. Romanovs. Han. If you're going to be a large and powerful nation/state, you're going to have a diverse group of citizens. So if you prefer being small and weak, go ahead and try making your ethnically - or religious, or political, or whatever identity you want to use - pure enclaves. Preferably without murdering a bunch of people in the process. That's not what they really want though, is it?)

So anyways. As we've grown more polarized, we've also sort of been self-segregating. I've seen it... when you start to someone, only to discover that their views are so wildly different from yours that you don't even know where to begin. And we don't want to get into a 'flamewar', or quarrel, so we generally roll our eyes and walk away.

Maybe even vent to our friends about how stupid the other side is. Like 'how can they possibly think X? And we build our own little echo chambers, where we only hang out and hear from people we agree with, and only read news articles from the sources we trust.

And, for the most part, I understood all that. I don't really want to ruin Thanksgiving, or stop talking to my various aunts and uncles, or get into a verbal fight with someone I don't even know because they've got a bumper sticker or t-shirt or hat I don't agree with.

Which is where the next part comes in...

I deployed to Iraq.

Actually, it's about more than that. 9/11 happened, I deployed to Iraq, and I wanted to understand.

I mean, I'm naturally curious and a voracious reader, so I prob would have done that anyway. But I also kind of agree with Sun-Tzu -

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

I will never agree with terrorism, or terrorist tactics. But in order to defeat them, I wanted to understand them. Why did they think this was a good strategy? What were they trying to do?

Some of it puzzled me initially. Our frames of reference were too different, I think. Like - did they really think 9/11 would start a race war in the US? (Damn, it's hard to find the references from something so long ago. Iirc, they thought their victory in Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and thought it'd be even easier to defeat the 'weaker' US, and somewhere in there was the idea of provoking a race war.)

I also recall that bin Laden grew mad at Saudi Arabia for not using oil as a weapon against the West, which I later learned was a concept that had been around for a while.

There were other things, not directly related to terrorism. There are some things you can only really learn about your country by leaving it. Like the overwhelming number of conspiracy theories that credible people seemed to believe (like that the CIA actually wanted the Sunni, or ISIS, or whoever to win. Things I knew weren't true, but that people who otherwise seemed rational believed.)

I probably ought to emphasize this more - when official news sources aren't considered reliable, people start looking elsewhere, and it's far too easy for rumors and outright fabrications to spread. I try to keep an open mind, and I don't necessarily trust official news sources, but I use a few rules of thumb when considering a conspiracy theory. One is that if it requires too large of a group to keep their mouths shut, it's probably not true... Another is Hanlon's razor - "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." A third is this - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you want to claim that 9/11 was an inside job, or that FDR knew about and allowed the Japanese to strike at Pearl Harbor, you need a bit more than just 'it sounds plausible.'

I know I grew disillusioned with our own media - the reporting on Iraq was awful, no matter if it was a 'liberal' or 'conservative' source. Fox News, CNN, most of them seemed to be trying to fight the domestic political battles of Vietnam all over again, and didn't really look at Iraq as it's own thing.

But I did think, for the most part, that journalistic obligations to get multiple sources and corroborating information meant you could sift through the opinions and spin and still get something worthwhile.

I remember reading about an incident in a neighborhood, I think in Baghdad? This was around 2006, I think, when extra-judicial killing (aka Sunni and Shia murdering each other and bodies turning up overnight) were a thing. Anyways, the article was talking about a neighborhood where one witness claimed a number of people were killed and their bodies hung from the streetlights. Another witness claimed nothing at all had happened.

And I found myself thinking - there's no way of reconciling these two. You can't say this was the type of distortion you can expect from the different perspectives people can have on the same incident. It either happened, or it didn't, and one of these sources was lying. (By way of contrast - all of our various media sources reported that the police shot Michael Brown in Ferguson. The spin came in the different perspectives on why he was shot, and who you found most credible when the stories differed, but everyone knew that Michael Brown had been shot, and that he had been shot by the police.)

I found myself thinking that letting conspiracy theories spread unchecked was a problem...

And to bring this back to personal policies... it was no longer enough to just roll my eyes and walk away. The people who believe this sort of stuff will spread it to others, and the more biased or credulous will believe it....

And I don't want to live in a world where 'the truth' seems to be whatever the majority seems to think happened. I don't want us to start arguing about whether Michael Brown had really been shot in the first place, or have some fool start claiming it wasn't really the police that shot him. We've got more than enough to argue about even when you accept the basic facts, let's not go spreading outright lies in the process.

(And, seriously, while some conspiracies seem to spread because of human nature, some of them are definitely tied to politics. Like Holocaust deniers... I don't know if they think they need to believe lies in order to undermine Israel, or they just don't want to believe people can be that awful, or what... but it's wrong, and I can't believe anything good will come of people spreading those sorts of lies.)

So anyways. Here I am, in 2020, and suddenly everyone is talking about 'fake news' and 'information operations', and I've got someone spreading crap on Facebook who doesn't seem to do any sort of fact-checking or bias checking. It's kind of scary.

I'm not judging others for cutting out people they don't agree with. I, personally, have deliberately chosen not to block or cut off anyone. Part of that is about preventing me from creating my own personal echo chamber, but part of it is also because rolling your eyes and walking away isn't enough.

I'm not saying get into fights over every little thing, though. That's generally counterproductive, especially if it gets heated and you start calling people stupid. (Even though I'm sometimes sorely tempted to. I have to remind myself that the stereotypes of the other side are generally not accurate. Really.)

I've come up with my own personal rules about it, though, and I accept that sometimes I just don't have the energy to get into it...

But even though I don't expect to ever change anyone's mind, I think its important to engage. For a couple of reasons:

First, as more and more people isolate themselves... so that they only hear from people who already agree with them... it's important to show that 'real' people do have different takes on things. I don't mean the stereotype we each create of the 'other', politically speaking. The 'snowflake liberal' or 'racist and uneducated conservative'.

It's also extremely important to speak out about things that can and should be fact checked. The big one I've gotten into has been about Islamophobia. Terrorists are awful, but most Muslims are NOT terrorists... and trying to lump them all together makes it harder to fight the bad guys.

I know things have gotten so bad that there's almost no news sources we can all agree on (conservatives claim fact checkers like Snopes are 'liberal', and won't believe them... there's now entire information eco-systems to support whatever you want to believe. Which makes it even more essential to keep some sort of grounding in fact, imho.)

There's more to it than that, but I've typed long enough for now. I'm sort of feeling my way into it, really. I try to ask for sources, but stay away from being insulting or sounding judgmental, and I'm most definitely open to giving sources if/when I'm asked for them.

Some days I really do wonder why I bother, though. And while I get why people are drawn to the articles that support their own biases, I have some serious questions for the ones knowingly and deliberately spreading lies.