Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
What were they supposed to do with the information presented to them? China locked down an entire province. SK implemented extreme measures to isolate and trace contacts. Other EU countries went into lockdown before the US.
If you're a public health official presented with with that information, knowing that you have a respiratory virus that is both highly contagious and virulent, installing half measures opens you up to the worst of both outcomes--massive death and economic calamity.
This was always going to end up getting Monday Morning QB'd. If the death toll ended up being lower than anticipated, people would complain that too much damage was done to the economy. If the death toll ended up higher, people would complain that not enough was done.
Rather than complaining, perhaps we should be happy if the death toll is lower because it means that the solution to the problem resulted in far less death and stress to the health care system than we could have anticipated. It isn't common, but sometimes therapies are *more* effective than you would have estimated.
And if that is the case, it allows you to implement an easing of restrictions at a greater rate, which I think we all believe would be a good thing.
|
I'm complaining because it was lazy and ineffective decision-making that was obvious in real-time.
This idea that "well nobody could've expected them to be off by that much" is folly. Yes, that could absolutely have been predicted and WAS. Moreover, instead of doubling down on their decisions based on 'evidence' that was proven faulty in real time, they could've adjusted to it.
I'm not criticizing outcomes, I'm criticizing process. There is no other discipline but politics that would try to defend how this was handled. It was a horrid approach.
Just chalking anything up to an 'abundance of caution' and excusing a wretched approach simply shouldn't fly. Somehow our response is immune to any kind of analysis? Suddenly
any benefit, no matter how small, is worth any cost? That's absurd.
Shit, we still don't know if some of these measures were
counterproductive because of the number of levers we tried to pull at the same time. There's still evidence to suggest that closing schools down provides little impact on spread but could make impacts worse.
Again - these outcomes weren't hard to predict at all but everyone was busy shouting over anyone who said "hey, maybe there are a dozen reasons we aren't Italy and that Imperial College model sure looks shaky as shit..." because they were scared and irrational.