Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[The Minsky Moment]

You could design a proper study that properly models the alternative scenario of continuing mask mandates, in the same surrounding context. There are ways of doing that.

I disagree. There will never be a model taking into account all the population level effects of the Texas statewide order that has anywhere near the consensus on design and inputs to conclusively determine anything.

I do think it would be possible to model, but if you disagree, then you have to accept that there is way using case data to prove or disprove Krugman.

However, since you do accept that masks help impede spread, then all that is left is to argue that Abbot's order either increased or did not change mask usage.

Am I missing something else?

[alfred russel]

metrobank hours

Look at Georgia. Georgia was the first state in the nation to get rid of virtually all rules, mostly on April 24 and basically entirely by May 1. Initially cases didn't spike, after a wave of negative press (most infamously the Atlantic's article titled "Georgia's Experiment in Human Sacrifice") and antilockdown people were triumphant. Then there was a massive summer surge and a bunch of "I told you so" from lockdown people.

In the end, Georgia's deaths / million is 1,801, roughly in line with the national average of 1,732. Georgia's death rate is 18th out of 50 states, and among deep south states it is 4th out of 5. If it matters, Louisiana is significantly higher--2,186 deaths/million, as the only deep south state with a democrat in charge.

What matters is how people behave, not what the (unenforced) rules are, and I continue to believe there would have been better behavior if the rules weren't so absurdly strict at the start. Plus there wouldn't have been the massive backlash to the rules from politicians like the Georgia governor if they weren't so disruptive.

[alfred russel]

However, since you do accept that masks help impede spread, then all that is left is to argue that Abbot's order either increased or did not change mask usage.

Am I missing something else?

You are.

In a zillion different ways. I posted one already that was that he legitimately could have deterred people from visiting the state, or encouraged people to self isolate out of fear of how irresponsible the action seemed to be.

Another is that the removal of restrictive public rules could encourage people that were previously congregating in homes and similar enclosed spaces to use public spaces that tend to be more socially distanced and well ventilated.

It also could have prompted people to stop relying on compliance with mandates to stay safe and take a personally assessed risk based approach with their decisions.

It could have caused the more politically inclined anti lockdown portions of the population to take precautions to support the new non rule based regime.

I don't think that any of these effects are in any way significant. Nor do I think that very many people are going to stop wearing masks because the state mandate was lifted. I believe the unenforced rules have basically become irrelevant for much of the population, and the cases have probably been falling in Texas because people were a bit frightened by the recent peak more than anything else.

[DGuller]

The correlation I assume is that if the state governor tells the people of the state they don't need to wear masks anymore and repeals all restrictions including enforceable restrictions on state or local property, then that will cause mask use to decline cet par. not increase.  And I think the burden of proof is very much on the side arguing the contrary.

I'm arguing against the logic used by Berkut.  If you assume that for any given person, the worst case scenario of a mandate repeal is that the person stops wearing a mask when previously they wore one, then it's correct to assume that as long as this happened to one person out of tens of millions, the case is proven.  However, once there exists a possibility of some paradoxical effect, such as a childishly stubborn person doing the opposite of what they're told, or people taking extra precautions because they realized they can't rely on idiotic government to protect them, then the logic doesn't work anymore, and you have to rely on some kind of data.

As an aside, I've been playing the newer version of Plague, Inc. where the task is to cure the world of the plague rather than spread it.  It turns out that one way to help spread the plague is to impose lockdowns when your non-compliance is already very high.  The way it works is that imposing a lockdown with high non-compliance sabotages some of the other measures like contact tracing whose effectiveness relies on non-compliance stat.  Obviously this is a game, and not a model of reality, but this is a game built on some kind of mathematical model, so there exist mathematical models of the pandemic control where you can have paradoxical effects.

Just to be clear, I'm not defending AR here, I'm challenging sloppy arguments.  I personally find AR's Texas data a little challenging to process, but I use that as an opportunity to try to understand something rather than as an opportunity to practice my handwaving.

[DGuller]

What I mean in the first paragraph is that if you assume that the only change from repeal of mandate could be from wearing a mask to not wearing a mask, then you just need one case of that to prove the correlation.  However, if the change in behavior can go both ways for any given person, then you can't prove the case logically, now you have to actually measure effects.

[The Minsky Moment]

You can make any argument about behavioral response, but the side that propounds a theory of behavioral response that is based on "some paradoxical effect, such as a childishly stubborn person doing the opposite of what they're told" - as you very aptly expressed it - then the initial burden of proof that such a response exists and had a material effect should be with the party asserting such paradoxical effect.

[DGuller]

You can make any argument about behavioral response, but the side that propounds a theory of behavioral response that is based on "some paradoxical effect, such as a childishly stubborn person doing the opposite of what they're told" - as you very aptly expressed it - then the initial burden of proof that such a response exists and had a material effect should be with the party asserting such paradoxical effect.

The burden of proof is a concept that is relevant only when you want to deliberately bias a conclusion.  There is a reason to bias conclusions in court, but there is no reason to bias conclusions in logical arguments, in fact there is a good reason not to.  If the logical argument doesn't work as long as there exists a possibility of another effect, then it just doesn't work as long as you didn't rule that possibility out.  Not every argument has to be logical in nature, but the ones that are logical work this way.

[The Minsky Moment]

When I see a logical argument posed, I will be happy to apply that standard.

[DGuller]

When I see a logical argument posed, I will be happy to apply that standard.

See Berkut's response to me, that was a logical argument.  His argument was that as long as one person stops wearing a mask as a result of repeal, then Krugman's case is proven, and presumably we can find one such case (no argument there, I'm sure there will be, no need to die on that hill).  What I did was point out that the argument was relying on the assumption that there cannot be any paradoxical effects, that the best case scenario for the repeal is that nothing changes for the better.

More mathematically, he was saying that as long some number greater than zero exists in a set of numbers, then the average of all the numbers cannot be zero.  I'm pointing out that this is true only if all the numbers are non-negative.

[The Minsky Moment]

Correct, Bekut's argument and mine is based on the assumption of no net paradoxical effects.  As well as the assumptions that our perception of reality isn't being distorted by demons and that Texas is a real state and not a fictional marketing gimmick of the dying hat and cowboy boot industries.

By the same token, the counter-argument does depend on some assumption of paradoxical effects.  (the demon hypothesis would be helpful but not strictly necessary). So where is the proof?

[Syt]

[DGuller]

Correct, Bekut's argument and mine is based on the assumption of no net paradoxical effects.  As well as the assumptions that our perception of reality isn't being distorted by demons and that Texas is a real state and not a fictional marketing gimmick of the dying hat and cowboy boot industries.

By the same token, the counter-argument does depend on some assumption of paradoxical effects.  (the demon hypothesis would be helpful but not strictly necessary). So where is the proof?

No, one is not making any assumptions by pointing out assumptions in other people's arguments.  When I point out that you're assuming no paradoxical effects, I'm not making an assumption that paradoxical effects exist.  This is really getting ridiculous.  Anyway, I made the point that I intended to make, and I don't think any further clarification will be productive towards advancing that point.  The horse is near the water, it's now up to the horse.

[alfred russel]

Correct, Bekut's argument and mine is based on the assumption of no net paradoxical effects.  As well as the assumptions that our perception of reality isn't being distorted by demons and that Texas is a real state and not a fictional marketing gimmick of the dying hat and cowboy boot industries.

By the same token, the counter-argument does depend on some assumption of paradoxical effects.  (the demon hypothesis would be helpful but not strictly necessary). So where is the proof?

This is really full of circular logic. You are assuming no "net paradoxical effects" which are apparently any factors that could offset people not wearing masks. So you are going to assume that some people aren't going to wear masks that were before when the mandate is lifted (I agree at some trivial level that is likely) but not going to assume the opposite.

A few quick searches on twitter did turn up evidence that people have been thinking the way I was thinking they might. Fear of traveling to Texas, reduced willingness to leave home isolation, reiteration of public health messaging/the key of individual responsibility. I haven't seen anyone saying, "awesome! i've been wearing masks but won't thanks to gov abbott!"

[The Minsky Moment]

So tweets by random celebs echoing the point that Krugman made in his editorial is evidence that Krugman was wrong????

The reasoning eludes me,

[alfred russel]

So tweets by random celebs echoing the point that Krugman made in his editorial is evidence that Krugman was wrong????

The reasoning eludes me,

I point out Krugman appears to be wrong when he said the removal of state level restrictions in Texas would result in death, as cases have sense fallen.

We all seem to assume that the mechanism for increased death (reduced mask wearing) is probably happening at some level, but you are disputing the mechanisms I've proposed for Abbott's actions lowering death tolls (labeled as "paradoxical") -- to quote you: "You can make any argument about behavioral response, but the side that propounds a theory of behavioral response that is based on "some paradoxical effect, such as a childishly stubborn person doing the opposite of what they're told" - as you very aptly expressed it - then the initial burden of proof that such a response exists and had a material effect should be with the party asserting such paradoxical effect."

I'll suggest that the labeling of the mechanisms as "paradoxical effects" is a byproduct of biased thinking.

But the tweets above are evidence that the mechanisms I conjectured are happening on some level:

-A CNN journalist reports "a high level of anxiety" and that at least one person will stop going in stores.
-I suggested some people will avoid travel to the state. I just gave you a person explicitly saying she will do just that.
-I gave you an example of Abbott's action being used to spread public health messaging and promote more cautious behavior.

No one has a comprehensive study quantifying the effects of Abbott's announcement on all the factors influencing transmission rates in Texas. The data point we have is what has happened to transmission rates, and the reality is they have fallen.