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We’re a full month into full lockdown and quite frankly. we’re just about fully filled with aggravation about it. We vent to each other and then we bring in a couple of really smart guys (and coincidentally, Ricochet podcasters): Avik Roy and Lanhee Chen. They (along with Bob Kocher and others) have published A New Strategy for Bringing People Back to Work During COVID-19, a manual for safely re-starting the economy. We delve into detail about how to get people of all ages and backgrounds back into the workforce while putting into place safeguards to prevent another round of infections and another shutdown. Also, should we be buying goods from China? Changing My Mind on “Country of Origin” Labeling Thanks to China, This week’s Lileks Post of The Week by BucknellDad tackles that topic. Finally, what are the podcasts the podcasters listen to? Well, you’ll have to listen t this podcast to find out.
Music from this week’s show: Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man by Travis Tritt
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Given the CDC’s catastrophically poor planning and preparation for this pandemic, despite that being its primary focus (supposedly), I find their self-assurance to be a bit mystifying. Here in N.C., the state health director’s TV ad still advises against wearing masks (“please don’t hoard masks” being the tell). I think that had we been instructed to wear masks, and the vast majority of us did, we could have flattened the curve virtually as well as we have (if in fact we have, timing-wise) without destroying so many livelihoods, much like South Korea did (but also with good testing, which the FDA and the CDC completely botched; I suspect this kind of bureaucratic wrangling goes on all the time but never caused a problem til now).
They each have expertise within their domain. Outside their domain, they are not experts.
To weigh and balance the consequences of different courses of action (or inaction), we also need insight about other considerations that they are not prepared to assess. It is no discredit to them to seek to include insight on those other considerations.
Besides deaths by suicides, delaying elective visits to the doctor (e.g. delayed identification of cancer), and numerous other negative impacts on health and wellbeing, there is also another very pragmatic consideration.
Just as grocery stores don’t create food, Amazon does not create its products. Some might imagine we can shelter in place indefinitely and just order from Amazon or other delivery services. But if one is alert, even at Amazon there are more and more items that already are unavailable or will be becoming unavailable as their stockpiles are exhausted.
Strategizing about how to get back to work, as Avik Roy and Lanhee Chen have done, is vital.
I concur with Roy and Chen that the key to opening up is to prioritize for those who are least likely to need hospital care. The more people who are exposed and gain natural immunity without hospitalization, the better our herd immunity.
Good quote, but never apologize to Rousseau, that reprobate. He probably has more blood on his foolish hands than Marx, though perhaps only because Marx was one of the many that followed Rousseau in his errors.
The goal of disentangling from dependence on China is going to be much more widely embraced now, especially as people realize that China was still engaging in international flights and international commerce even at the same time that they were isolating Wuhan from travel to/from or contact with other parts of China. They knew of the human-to-human danger, but knowingly let it spread to the world regardless, as if nothing was wrong.
Parts of the world (e.g. Iran and Italy) that had harsh early outbreaks were also countries in trade and work relationships with China. China had been trying to promote itself in other countries through its Belt and Road Initiative.
About “I Pencil”, the key point is that no one person knows enough and central planning is futile and impractical. We make pencils and other things through distributed knowledge and concurrent decisions.
Applying that to getting out of China, once companies know that their customers don’t care for products from China, to keep customers they can each seek out their own best plans for alternatives to China.
delete
Every level of society need to urgently make decisions to disentangle ourselves from China.
It’s basically just a mafia with a military.
@peterrobinson There are plenty of reasons for someone to want to avoid injury or death, besides not being a “believer.” Even people who believe in an afterlife don’t want to leave their family without a “breadwinner” etc.
Let me say that I’m quite proud of Rob. He was a bit slow to realize this, in my view, but he’s come around. He said, at 46:37:
I don’t think that the problem is the politicians, actually. The problem is the people. We have too many people who can’t handle the truth, and with a representative government, the politicians have no choice but to pander to them.
I have a criticism of the plan proposed by Roy and Chen (both of whom I quite like, by the way). I think that the contact tracing idea is silly. I’ve always thought that it is silly, though I am no expert. It struck me as implausible from the outset.
Dr. Bhattacharya confirmed this, saying that it is almost impossible to do contact tracing at this point (the link is here; the contact tracing discussion starts at around 9:30).
So why have contact tracing as part of the plan? This would be another misleading idea, if people get the impression that it’s going to solve the problem. It will not. If we tell people this, and open the economy, and then people get sick despite the ineffective contact tracing, there will be pressure to do another unwise lockdown.
It is extremely difficult to communicate this message to people. How do you stop panic in someone who is in a state of hysterical panic?
I should add that I’m not necessarily opposed to some contact tracing. It should be made clear that it is not a solution. It might help a bit, and may well be worth doing for that reason. But it’s only going to slow the spread somewhat, not stop it. This is another truth that people need to face, I think.
Although the advocates of contact tracing really need to think this through, and explain it, especially from a civil liberties standpoint. I’m sorry if my frustration shows sometimes, but people really don’t seem to do this.
So here I am, economy opened up again, going about my life. Here is the contact tracing plan, as I understand it. Some guy named Clyde tested positive, and Clyde watched a baseball game at the local sports bar (a rerun, of course) with Jim and Chuck. And Chuck was in the Walmart checkout line at the same time as Suzy. And Suzy’s daughter Linda was in a dance class with my daughter. So . . . now I need to be put into isolation for 2-4 weeks?
I think that this actually is the plan.
Tell me if I’m wrong. I don’t think that I’m wrong, and I don’t think that this is a good plan. If someone has an idea that is more sophisticated, I’d be happy to consider it.
At a large wedding banquet, you don’t want everyone trying to get into the buffet line at once. One strategy is to tell each table when it is their turn to be free to get in line.
When people begin to engage again in society and at work, there will be more spread of the virus. Fact. No point to say otherwise. The virus is still just as contagious and we are still largely lacking immunity.
However, if people are set free to reenter society in a specified order, e.g. when your “table” is notified, starting from those least likely to need any special treatment, then we can begin to build up herd immunity without overwhelming the “buffet line” of hospital facilities and staff. It could be done in steps that generally advance by birth years. It is very rare for young people to have serious complications. Some people don’t even have symptoms.
BTW, here is the study suggesting that the number who already have antibodies may be 50-85 times as large as the number of confirmed cases.
The goal cannot be that no one gets the disease. Most people will get the disease. The goal is that most of us become immune from having had the disease without creating a crisis.
That’s why people at highest risk need to keep sheltered and/or extra vigilantly safe until we either have a vaccine or enough people have had the disease to develop herd immunity.
It only works under certain conditions.
Yep. I’m keeping to my cave.
Yes, should have just done a strikethrough. Anyway, happy that I read the quote in a book on the French Revolution and thought of the meme-worthy line myself.
You should never apologize to Rousseau. Apologize to Marx before Rousseau, at least there is an argument that Marx couldn’t have seen what was coming.
(The following has been edited after I read through all the comments)
Let say that I do not wish to pile on J Ro. I leave my above commentary because I find it amusing when people on Ricochet think the same thing.
To my knowledge, no mafia has ever treated Uighurs, Tibetans are peaceful Catholics with anything approaching the brutality of the Communist Chinese Party.
I’m not in any sense joking. Tony Soprano is probably not nearly as indifferent to human life as the inner circle of party leaders in Beijing.
Fair enough. My point is they are doing all of this to make money. It’s just a sick way to make money, with a little bit of ethno-nationalism thrown in.
Yes indeed. The Communists in China are operating from an atheist worldview in which the state outlasts any individual and is (perceived to be) far more important. Human lives can be sacrificed for the sake of the state. They are as broken eggs for the sake of the promised omelet (that never comes).
C.S. Lewis had some things to say about the radical difference in view between thinking nations outlast people and realizing people outlast nations. I think there is another quote (perhaps in Mere Christianity? maybe someone else will remember it), but here is one.