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Doomsaying
The icon's a stormcrow. See what I did there?
So there's a battle in America over whether to reopen now and, if so, how much. My friends lean more toward the "stay closed as long as it takes," and I've been thinking about that and what it means from a policy perspective. I posted about it on Facebook and this is slightly expanded from that:
So, here are some facts to start:
Which gets to the policy part of what I was thinking about. Basically, "shelter in place indefinitely" isn't an actual policy solution. It's the same idea as abstinence education or "just say no" drug policies. Would they work if everyone listened and followed them? Oh, absolutely. Will they? No, definitely not. So in the real world, you have to design a policy knowing that some percentage of people will be sloppy in adhering to it, and some won't adhere to it at all, and come up with ways to mitigate the harmful effects of that. Chicago is definitely not doing this The messaging in Chicago is all "stay in side unless you are absolutely required to go out," even though that's not what the Illinois Department of Health guidelines say--they stress the importance of regular exercise for boosting the immune system, as they should--and the city has closed tons of parks and paths, forcing people onto narrow sidewalks or into streets where cars are speeding an average of 14 mph higher than last month due to a lower traffic burden. And there's very clearly no plan for what to do when the weather gets better. Chicago only has two or three months of summer a year, and once the weather gets nice and stays there, people are going to be out and about, quarantine be damned.
When I look at those Mayor Lightfoot "go the fuck home" memes, I think about how it's been cold and rainy with the exception of a handful of days for the last month and a half, and the importance of never giving an order you know will be disobeyed.
So I think, what is the point of the shelter in place orders? They're to flatten the curve, right? We have and are doing that, but eventually they'll have to be lifted, because herd immunity is the only way through this--either natural, because enough people get coronavirus and recover from it, or artificial, through a vaccine. What are the criteria to lift them? How long are they going to last? If the governor tries to extend it through June, I'm pretty sure there will be widespread disobedience. People are acting like the point of all this is to prevent anyone from getting infected, and the time for that was back in January when Republicans were lying to the public about the danger while privately profiteering on it. It's too late for that now. The only way out is through.
New Zealand is on its way to eradicating coronavirus, but to maintain that, they're talking about enforcing the current two-week quarantine on all foreign arrivals for another year. And they're an isolated pair of islands, so they might be able to do that. We can't. Not anymore.
Not that the "open our states!" plans are better. You can force stores to open--and that's the real point of Republican plans, to force stores open so that workers who don't come in due to worries about infection have "voluntarily" quit and don't have to be paid unemployment--but you can't force people to go to them. The overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of restrictions lasting for a while and plan to be cautious about going out afterwards. Restaurants already run on thin margins. If you take out half the seating capacity of a restaurant to maintain a six-foot radius, that restaurant goes out of business even if it's always packed in the remaining seats. And there aren't going to be any big conventions or gatherings or festivals or concerts, or the money they bring in, in most places for the rest of the year because no one want to be the place where a coronavirus outbreak started and spread elsewhere.
You only have to see the Republicans' plan to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits to know what the real point of their reopening plan is.
Basically, my point is that if your plan is to prevent anyone from dying, you've already failed and you'll fail in the future, and screaming at people about how they're selfish and terrible won't work anymore than it'll prevent teenagers from having sex. People who think we can just shelter in place until we have a vaccine don't understand medical research or the effects of loneliness and isolation on people and are willing to inflict widespread trauma on the entire population in the hopes of something that might never happen. And Republicans are perfectly willing to let tens of thousands of people die because otherwise their stock portfolios might lose a bit of money next quarter.
Yes, all of our choices are bad. That's what happens during a plague.
It was raining when I woke up, and sitting in my sun nook with the rain on the windows, drinking tea, was lovely. Now it's just grey and drizzly, and that's much less fun. Hopefully the rain comes back, since the sun won't be back until the weekend.
So there's a battle in America over whether to reopen now and, if so, how much. My friends lean more toward the "stay closed as long as it takes," and I've been thinking about that and what it means from a policy perspective. I posted about it on Facebook and this is slightly expanded from that:
So, here are some facts to start:
- There has never been a successful vaccine for any coronavirus variant.
- The fastest vaccine humanity has ever developed was the mumps vaccine, and that took four years.
Which gets to the policy part of what I was thinking about. Basically, "shelter in place indefinitely" isn't an actual policy solution. It's the same idea as abstinence education or "just say no" drug policies. Would they work if everyone listened and followed them? Oh, absolutely. Will they? No, definitely not. So in the real world, you have to design a policy knowing that some percentage of people will be sloppy in adhering to it, and some won't adhere to it at all, and come up with ways to mitigate the harmful effects of that. Chicago is definitely not doing this The messaging in Chicago is all "stay in side unless you are absolutely required to go out," even though that's not what the Illinois Department of Health guidelines say--they stress the importance of regular exercise for boosting the immune system, as they should--and the city has closed tons of parks and paths, forcing people onto narrow sidewalks or into streets where cars are speeding an average of 14 mph higher than last month due to a lower traffic burden. And there's very clearly no plan for what to do when the weather gets better. Chicago only has two or three months of summer a year, and once the weather gets nice and stays there, people are going to be out and about, quarantine be damned.
When I look at those Mayor Lightfoot "go the fuck home" memes, I think about how it's been cold and rainy with the exception of a handful of days for the last month and a half, and the importance of never giving an order you know will be disobeyed.
So I think, what is the point of the shelter in place orders? They're to flatten the curve, right? We have and are doing that, but eventually they'll have to be lifted, because herd immunity is the only way through this--either natural, because enough people get coronavirus and recover from it, or artificial, through a vaccine. What are the criteria to lift them? How long are they going to last? If the governor tries to extend it through June, I'm pretty sure there will be widespread disobedience. People are acting like the point of all this is to prevent anyone from getting infected, and the time for that was back in January when Republicans were lying to the public about the danger while privately profiteering on it. It's too late for that now. The only way out is through.
New Zealand is on its way to eradicating coronavirus, but to maintain that, they're talking about enforcing the current two-week quarantine on all foreign arrivals for another year. And they're an isolated pair of islands, so they might be able to do that. We can't. Not anymore.
Not that the "open our states!" plans are better. You can force stores to open--and that's the real point of Republican plans, to force stores open so that workers who don't come in due to worries about infection have "voluntarily" quit and don't have to be paid unemployment--but you can't force people to go to them. The overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of restrictions lasting for a while and plan to be cautious about going out afterwards. Restaurants already run on thin margins. If you take out half the seating capacity of a restaurant to maintain a six-foot radius, that restaurant goes out of business even if it's always packed in the remaining seats. And there aren't going to be any big conventions or gatherings or festivals or concerts, or the money they bring in, in most places for the rest of the year because no one want to be the place where a coronavirus outbreak started and spread elsewhere.
You only have to see the Republicans' plan to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits to know what the real point of their reopening plan is.
Basically, my point is that if your plan is to prevent anyone from dying, you've already failed and you'll fail in the future, and screaming at people about how they're selfish and terrible won't work anymore than it'll prevent teenagers from having sex. People who think we can just shelter in place until we have a vaccine don't understand medical research or the effects of loneliness and isolation on people and are willing to inflict widespread trauma on the entire population in the hopes of something that might never happen. And Republicans are perfectly willing to let tens of thousands of people die because otherwise their stock portfolios might lose a bit of money next quarter.
Yes, all of our choices are bad. That's what happens during a plague.
It was raining when I woke up, and sitting in my sun nook with the rain on the windows, drinking tea, was lovely. Now it's just grey and drizzly, and that's much less fun. Hopefully the rain comes back, since the sun won't be back until the weekend.
no subject
Well, I picked my icon for a reason.
I remain convinced that this was absolutely deliberate.
The rich have gotten a whole lot richer in the last couple months, so it wouldn't surprise me if they thought it would be bad enough to make some money, but not bad enough to ruin society.
Oops.