2020-03-18
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As things break, look for the cracks and try to learn. There will
be many systems that will reveal their flaws this year, but our
job will be to remember them afterwards.
The biggest crack for me at the moment: Avoidance of math. It
seems to me people have lost their basic math skills. Looking at
graphs where the curve is turning up even on the logarithmic scale
I am amazed how people are so slow to get with the program.
If you haven't yet, read the paper about Mitigation vs.
Suppression[1]. The punch line is: if we do not take the harshest
measures, the best case scenario is that the health care system
will be overwhelmed "only" eight-fold. Even with the harsh
suppression style reaction we will be on lockdown until there is
a vaccine. That would be a year from now.
Another math related crack, which I find disturbing is that the
Spanish Flu is being talked about like this forgotten legend of
a disease. Some say it killed more people than WWI and WWII put
together. Yet, there are others who say it was "only" 17 million
who died. Out of 500 million people alive those days, that makes
3,4 per cent. Corona is supposed to have 0,9% death toll. I find
these numbers too close to each other especially since the 0,9%
is a number where the health care system was functioning. I am
expecting catastrofic failures when the health care is working at
maximum capacity for a prolonged time. Out of the active cases
6% are serious or critical[2]. I suspect that many of them
would not survive without a functioning health care system.
1.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/
2.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
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