Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Tamas]

I read that Turkmenistan has banned the use of the word "coronavirus".

That's one swift solution!

[The Minsky Moment]

but I might change my mind on that if there's evidence that  . . . the benefit of being stricter outweighs the cost of undermining public support.

That evidence would be a bunch of dead people. By the time the evidence exists it will be too late to counteract the impact.

And yes I take your point about behavioral response.  Fact is that human beings in their natural state do a shitty job of rational risk assessment.

[The Minsky Moment]

Meanwhile in my neighbourhood a local Church has been selling a £91 "plague protection kit" which is actually just oil and red string

Like I said . . . the human brain has its limitations.

[Maladict]

Awful numbers in the UK today. Another 563 deaths (+31%) and tests are still not happening on the scale they should be.

Don't know the issues but the government is really fucking up its plan to ramp up testing and to get PPE to hospitals at the minute.

Also it feels like staff self-isolating is going to be the biggest capacity issue in the NHS, apparently 1 in 4 front-line staff are self-isolating at the minute. But the plan to test NHS staff (which could get people back into work) is really not being delivered, only 2,000 tests so far.

You're probably still beating us in testing by miles. We are "ramping up" from 4.000 to 17.000 tests a day, by late April

[Eddie Teach]

I read that Turkmenistan has banned the use of the word "coronavirus".

That's one swift solution!

Apparently YouTube demonetizes videos that use the word.

[Habbaku]

The Biden senile thing bugs me - he has a speech impairment that he has struggled with his whole life.  It's not an age thing, he's always had this issue. Biden is no genius - but he is miles above the mental 3rd grader that occupies the White House with his best words.

Anyone who is criticizing Biden's intellect/speech issues and is even remotely honest needs to compare him against Trump, not some sort of mythical perfect candidate.

There is simply no comparison between the two--Biden wins on every level, in every category.

[Admiral Yi]

Shelf:  I pondered the issue of policing and compliance while dolefully chewing my survival rations, and came up with a theory to explain your position.

To wit, your position has nothing to do with your stated rationale, but is rather rooted in the proletarian/revolutionary/protest culture attitude that cops are, and always will be, the oppressor, working on behalf of The Man to keep the little people down.  "You're not the boss of me!  Down with the pigs!"

Which can be a charming diversion in normal times, but really has no place during an actual emergency.

As a tangent, I think the same well spring generated the Sovereign Citizen movement in the US, arguably the most useless bunch of numbskulls ever assembled.

[Legbiter]

The Biden senile thing bugs me - he has a speech impairment that he has struggled with his whole life.  It's not an age thing, he's always had this issue. Biden is no genius - but he is miles above the mental 3rd grader that occupies the White House with his best words.

This is Biden when he had a functioning brain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JobcB8cM1zw

Note the sharp wit, excellent humor and impeccable timing. Pay attention to the funny logical conclusions building up to a solid performance. The folksy charisma, etc. No need to launch into any cope regarding a stutter. The man was a killer.

Now look at his performance and current state. They have him under lock-and-key, his media appearances like recently on MSNBC are as soft/nonadverserial as they can get without involving prune juice and he still struggles even though he knows the questions in advance. He has this very familiar vacant look to his eyes if you've known elderly relatives and he frequently just loses his train of thought. 

At this point it's elder abuse. "But Leggy, Orange Man Bad" I hear you say. Yeah sure, but Trump can hold hours long rallies and press conferences and has great comparative advantage. Something has to be done.

[Legbiter]

You're probably still beating us in testing by miles. We are "ramping up" from 4.000 to 17.000 tests a day, by late April

Jesus.

[Sheilbh]

This is the part of your position that makes absolutely no sense to me.

A person who is complying with the rules is presumably doing so for one of two reasons: he thinks the rules are worth following, or he is afraid of getting punished for breaking them.

Why would this person, upon seeing some else get punished for breaking the rules, be thereby more inclined to break the rules?

Because the punishment shows that the rule is not worth following?  "Gee, that drone shaming was awful, so now I think the chances of transmission aren't really that high?"

Because he has now decided he in fact really likes to be punished?

I think there's a lot going on in thinking the rules are worth following and includes punishment.

So part of it is that you think they're proportionate - are these rules actually aimed at reducing transmission and are a sensible way of doing that. Part of it will be about whether you respect the rules - this is why I think the comms around this is best handled by scientists and doctors, not politicians. Part of it is about if you think they're being implemented and enforced fairly, which is where the police come in. Part of it, probably, is around fear of punishment. And, I think, part of it is probably people wondering, could I get away with it (I think this factor drives a lot of white-collar crime, for example)?

I don't think people think about those in a rational tickbox way, but they forman overal perception and would probably describe it as being about fairness. It's also why different communities may have different perceptions of the same law, because they experience it as implemented and enforced in different ways. More specifically with these rules I think it'll also be driven by a sense of does it go back to the first point - is this really going to reduce transmission on a common sense level.

I think the proportionateness was really key in terms of timing. I know there's lots of people who think the government didn't act quickly enough, but if you look at the polling people didn't take this seriously for a long time. Which was despite government messages (I think they maybe should have done more advertising/social media campaigns). And you can go as strict as you want in the letter of the law but if people think it's over-the-top they'll just ignore it and you'll have to spend a lot of police time enforcing it. At the minute, I think people view it as proportionate - this will change once we're on a downward slope and things are looking better, which as I say is, I think, the riskiest moment.

I think people respect the rules at the minutes. The biggest risk now is around if they perceive the rules are being implemented by a bunch of jobsworths - e.g. harassing corner shops for stocking "non-essential" chocolate eggs - that will undermine respect and increase the sense that they may not be fairly implemented. Similarly if people think there's not a consistent approach and actually some police are super strict and some are super lax they want view their risk as equal. Both of those points, to me, mean people are more likely to think either the law isn't worth following  - it's actually daft, over-the-top rules and you just need to follow common sense; "how does banning/cancelling chocolate eggs stop the spread of this disease?/They're just a bunch of typical little Hitlers/jobsworths". Or it increases the sense that you can get away, if you know other people are and the policing's inconsistent - like speeding or parking offences (especially if they also respect the rules less).

This is also why I think the correct messaging from the police is: these rules make us safer, thanks to everyone for following/never been so quiet in town, we're still around if you need us. Not "we have issued summonses to the following" nonsense - I don't even know what a "summons" is.

It may be that we need stricter rules, it's happened in Italy and France (though anecdotally I'm not seeing groups of runners), but that needs to be communicated and explained so people understand why they're proportionate and respect them. Just further turning the screws may deliver a marginal gain among people who are not complying but create more leakage - people trying to get round the law in the overwhelming majority who are - which increases the risk of transmission.

Shelf:  I pondered the issue of policing and compliance while dolefully chewing my survival rations, and came up with a theory to explain your position.

To wit, your position has nothing to do with your stated rationale, but is rather rooted in the proletarian/revolutionary/protest culture attitude that cops are, and always will be, the oppressor, working on behalf of The Man to keep the little people down.  "You're not the boss of me!  Down with the pigs!"

Which can be a charming diversion in normal times, but really has no place during an actual emergency.

I'll pass your theory on to former Conservative Justice Secretary David Gauke, former UKIP MEP Patrick O'Flynn and Lord Sumption OBE at the next Party meeting.

That evidence would be a bunch of dead people. By the time the evidence exists it will be too late to counteract the impact.

And yes I take your point about behavioral response.  Fact is that human beings in their natural state do a shitty job of rational risk assessment.

We have loads of evidence - data about transport patterns, telecoms data showing movement, police forces patrolling and monitoring, even just early economic reports. If there's evidence that there's widespread non-compliance, then the rules can be made stricter. If the evidence is showing widespread compliance - then why do we need stricter rules?

To my suspicious Lutheran mind that seems awfully close to buying an indulgence. 

This is very much a Pentecostal thing.

[Oexmelin]

 

A person who is complying with the rules is presumably doing so for one of two reasons: he thinks the rules are worth following, or he is afraid of getting punished for breaking them.

Because voluntary compliance - which is perhaps one of the biggest enigmas in the study of human interactions - does not seem to really work that way. Both the fear of punishment, and the rational self-justification, rely on many different assessments of fairness, equality, status, etc. And above all, it relies on collective self-policing. Very little of it is an individual decision. A harsh punishment for what is considered a minor offense can undermine the entire coercive apparatus. Seeing someone punished harshly for something that people do not already believe is a major offense casts doubt on the validity of all other measures of external compliance. Unfair punishment being meted out regularly sow doubt on the capacity of law enforcement to behave in a just manner.

It's not that witnessing transgressions gives you the idea that it's fine to transgress. It's that it casts doubt on the reasons why measures exist in the first place, in the capacity of authorities to apply them in a reasonable manner, and more crucially, in the necessity of mutually policing the behavior of those close to you.

Now, you may very well argue that these doubts are stupid, that the measures are all valid and legitimate, etc. The problem is that what is valid and legitimate is always more mushy of a territory than the on/off nature of the law. A democratic society relies on a measure of collective acceptance of the rules, i.e., we need to self-police to a great deal, lest we abdicate that position to an external force. One doesn't need to be a romantic revolutionary to hold that position: it's a core tenet of democracy, not a "distraction".

Edit: more or less what Sheilbh wrote above.

[The Minsky Moment]

The Biden senile thing bugs me - he has a speech impairment that he has struggled with his whole life.  It's not an age thing, he's always had this issue. Biden is no genius - but he is miles above the mental 3rd grader that occupies the White House with his best words.

This is Biden when he had a functioning brain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JobcB8cM1zw

Note the sharp wit, excellent humor and impeccable timing. Pay attention to the funny logical conclusions building up to a solid performance. The folksy charisma, etc. No need to launch into any cope regarding a stutter. The man was a killer.

Now look at his performance and current state. They have him under lock-and-key, his media appearances like recently on MSNBC are as soft/nonadverserial as they can get without involving prune juice and he still struggles even though he knows the questions in advance. He has this very familiar vacant look to his eyes if you've known elderly relatives and he frequently just loses his train of thought. 

At this point it's elder abuse. "But Leggy, Orange Man Bad" I hear you say. Yeah sure, but Trump can hold hours long rallies and press conferences and has great comparative advantage. Something has to be done.

I see him doing exactly what he does now - going through rehearsed numbered points, saying "folks" a lot, making an odd pronunciation error ("number thoo").

It's true that with age, there is a loss of some fluency and immediate recall.  For example, earlier videos of Trump show him with much greater fluency and command of details and figures - even when speaking extemporaneously -  than he exhibits now when having prepared texts and teleprompters to rely on: https://www.msnbc.com/documentaries/watch/today-show-1980-with-donald-trump-589527619719

Although the "alternative facts" are the same.

[alfred russel]

Shelf:  I pondered the issue of policing and compliance while dolefully chewing my survival rations, and came up with a theory to explain your position.

To wit, your position has nothing to do with your stated rationale, but is rather rooted in the proletarian/revolutionary/protest culture attitude that cops are, and always will be, the oppressor, working on behalf of The Man to keep the little people down.  "You're not the boss of me!  Down with the pigs!"

Which can be a charming diversion in normal times, but really has no place during an actual emergency.

As a tangent, I think the same well spring generated the Sovereign Citizen movement in the US, arguably the most useless bunch of numbskulls ever assembled.

This isn't complex. As I think you said earlier, there are two reasons to follow rules:

1) out of altruism/a sense of upholding your end of the social construct, and
2) out of fear of the punishment that will come if you don't follow them (or alternatively the benefits you will accrue if you do, but that isn't really in play here).

In certain circumstances, they are mutually exclusive. To get altruistic conduct, people need to believe the rules actually serve a legitimate purpose and are rational. If the police are harassing people doing things that will harm no one, it makes it hard for others to accept that the rules are legitimate and rational, and changes the mindset to one of being forced to give up aspects of ordinary life by officials without decent reasons.

Good luck enforcing this quarantine if you lose the support of a significant portion of the population. There aren't enough police, and the remedy of throwing people in jail is likely to be counterproductive anyway.

[Tamas]

Fair enough but if the alternative to risking the ability to enforce the quarantine is not even try to enforce the quarantine, then what is being risked, at all?

Do you guys seriously think that the vast majority who abides the quarantine right now without coercion, upon seeing the uncooperative minority coerced into abiding, would stand up and say "fuck this shit I start breaking the rules because fuck them!"

[Sheilbh]

Fair enough but if the alternative to risking the ability to enforce the quarantine is not even try to enforce the quarantine, then what is being risked, at all?

Do you guys seriously think that the vast majority who abides the quarantine right now without coercion, upon seeing the uncooperative minority coerced into abiding, would stand up and say "fuck this shit I start breaking the rules because fuck them!"

My point is, as you say, the vast majority are abiding by the quarantine and that should be the message from the authorities.

Obviously they should enforce the quarantine - so there's been house parties that have been shut down, football matches on parks and people going out with their personal trainer. Those are against the rules and are clearly against the spirit of the rules as well. They should be enforced.

But they shouldn't be enforcing against things that aren't against the rules, because I think that will undermine the actual, existing rules and efforts at enforcement - if you want them stricter that's a job for the government, not the police. At this point there's no restriction on where or how long you exercise - so it is allowed to go to the beach or Peaks to exercise. Corner shops are allowed to be open (they provide retail of essential goods) and there is no regulation setting out what are "essential" and "non-essential" foods, so leave them alone if they're selling chocolate. Under the regulations households are allowed out of the house together and can go to the shop together. I've no issue with the police enforcing the rules - I've an issue with them making them up.