COVID-19 Notes: Politics vs Epidemiology

This whole COVID-19 thing has been a laboratory experiment in human behavior. The virus is invisible and for many people there has been no direct experience of the pandemic. So people's reactions are based on what they are being told and instructed to do via the media.

On the foreign TV stations today (CNN, EuroNews) there were video sequences of UK people enjoying the parks in the sunshine over this sunny weekend - in violation of the lockdown. In our own news channels (BBC, ITV) not so much. No copying, please!

The media find themselves in a difficult position: the government fears the fundamental irrationality of the masses and therefore declines to present the models from which they're working ... and the options they're considering.

The culture wars, in all their social momentum, aptly demonstrate how much political force can be assembled in support of nonsense. Who'd risk it?

The media could call them on this, but they also understand how dangerous it is: they hold themselves on a leash, ask seemingly-tough (but rather general) questions on secondary issues and don't challenge the inevitable obfuscatory replies they get from the politicians and health bureaucrats.

I agree this is both sensible and necessary: I merely draw attention to the fact that it's theatre. It also makes everyone involved look kinda stupid as they walk on eggshells.

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It's possible (while mixing a few metaphors) to read between the lines and figure out the small print of government strategy. Right now it's all about suppressing the early exponential phase of infections and building NHS capacity plus testing; in a month they will probably let the 'young' out - festooned with tracing apps - and keep the 'old-retired' cocooned. Not a hard sale. There will be much official wriggling around on 'intrusive' mobile phone apps to lubricate buy-in.

Come the summer the economy will reboot, in fits and starts, with some fumbling since the data on infections/immunity will still be too sparse and underdetermined.

Then as we wheel into the autumn the recession will bite in earnest. I expect 2020/2021 to be the lost years as the zombie-sector of the economy caves in with mass unemployment and bankruptcies.

The economic green shoots are postponed till late 2021.

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What are we doing? We have the exercise bike parked in the hall and we both do 5 or 10 minutes a day at a pant-inducing rate. I jogged the 1.2 km 'round the block' yesterday in a preliminary 7 minutes and 10 seconds; my target is a minute quicker.

Important to prep the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

"Adam Bede" by George Elliot

Clare has discovered audio books on Kindle - now heavily discounted - and is pictured listening to "Adam Bede".

Amazon link

I am on book six of Chung Kuo and still engaged with the agents of progressive change being uniformly unpleasant and/or psychopathic while the T'ang leadership representing the status quo (= cultural death) are elegant, intelligent and refined. SF opera on the grand scale.

COVID-19 notes: mid-March 2020

We were walking around Wells marketplace yesterday. Everything normal: the market stalls were all in place, crowded with people; the high street was full of passers-by.

No masks of course.

My estimate is that there will just be a handful of people with the infection at the moment: no-one here will know anybody who has a real problem (above the noise level of normal winter illness).

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The criticisms of the Government's policy are largely idiotic. They remind me of the apocryphal Star Trek quote: "We gotta slow down, Cap'n, the crew cannae take any more!"

Despite the robust pronouncements of an excitable Greg Cochran, Europe and the States can't get R0 below 1 - the political institutions and popular mandate don't permit it (nor is it desirable given the risks of further outbreaks). So the infection will run its course at a rate which is subject to only marginal re-engineering.

Despite the polemics, UK policy is essentially the same as that being applied in Europe, factoring in the time-lags. I'm expecting the UK peak to be mid-May (if delays don't really work) to mid-June (if they do). The earlier date is 60 days from today: eight and a half weeks.

We will soon find out what 400,000 dead looks like: [67 million * 60% * 1%]. 

Note that the background death rate in the UK is around 100,000 per month.

[70 million population divided by 70 years of life = 1 million dead/year; 100,000/month].

"Fifty percent of cases would be within two thirds of a standard deviation from the central point, which gives 2 * (2/3) * (2.25) = 3 weeks."

So during the peak three weeks, the death rate will be 275,000/ 75,000 = 3.7 over normal.

We will notice when every 'normal' dead body is accompanied by three additional ones..

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I read a couple of books where the first half - analysis - was excellent while the second half, conclusions and recommendations, was rubbish. It's what happens when somewhat-bright people review the work of people who are really smart - but then expose their own lack of insight.

Amazon link

Great analysis of Marx's sociological and economic thinking. Best summary if you are already familiar with the economic concepts (c + v + s etc). But his conclusions, where he indicates why he is no longer a Marxist, are just ... terrible. Not wrong: just superficial, lacking insight.

Example thought: 'Marx's economics work is not used by modern economists: it's like it never existed at all'.

Right.

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Amazon link

Kagan has a good, clear-eyed analysis of the basis of the post-WW2 order. American hegemonic power created a global Hobbesian state in which lesser (but historically dangerous) powers - Germany, Japan - were disarmed and prevented from rising again. A somewhat demilitarised non-American capitalist world gained the benefits of trade: Les Trente Glorieuses.

The unravelling of neoliberalism, dominated as it was by globalisation, financialisation and a growing separation between the elites and the masses, has refracted itself into political crisis everywhere together with the fraying of the 'American mission to the world'.

Kagan is broadly correct in this analysis and his writing is historically-informed: 'the jungle always grows back'.

At this point his intelligence fails him. He confuses the epiphenomenal role of elite institutions (EU, IMF, UN) with those real global, historical forces which are transforming class and inter-state relationships. His tail wags his dog - a paradigm which the first half of his book has already decisively refuted.

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What I'm reading now

Amazon link

Ten volumes (out of twenty) so far published (Wikipedia article). I'm on volume three.

This is good old-fashioned SF on the grandest scale with a cast of thousands - most of whom end up horribly dead.

A frightening view of a future dominated by China with its traditional Confucian culture of Han superiority, disdain for 'Barbarians' and a preference for a life of regimented stasis.

Nope. Will never happen.