Nachdenken, Lesen, Reflektieren. In diesem BLOG möchte ich einigen Gedanken nachhängen, die nicht unbedingt ausgereift genug sind um einen "geschliffenen" Artikel zu schreiben, die ich aber dennoch teilen möchte.
COVID—Did we learn anything, aside from moral grandstanding?
I just came back from a two week trip to England. One observation is stunning: no one is doing any Covid-precautions. No masks, no nothing. All restrictions were lifted in the UK from Feb. 24. Even in the London tube you only see the odd person wearing a mask (probably tourists), 99% nothing. My wife and I were both wearing masks in England in all situations I would have in Europe — and were the only ones.
We had the strongest political interference into our personal rights since I was born, and this is roughly half a century. Such measures can be warranted but shout for open discussion, as fas as I am concerned. I am certainly not opposed to measures against a pandemic that are working, but the observations are starting to get really odd. Now I look at some data
(1) Germany and Austria, with strong measures, had numbers way above England and the US over the last three months, before Christmas the situation was seemingly a bit different but over the last 6 - 9 months certainly roughly the same. The principal patterns over time are pretty similar though.
(2) Now look at Florida and California: Florida, a red state, had barely any measures, California on the other hand, as woke as it gets, has/had among the strongest measures in the US, as far as I know. Both curves over the last 6 months are roughly identical.
Some context here: Florida has ~22Mio (126/km2), California ~40 Mio (98/km2) inhabitants. Florida also has a much older population and should generally be hit harder.
Anyways: I want to be clear about one thing: I am not against measures, I am just stunned that none of these things are discussed in the popular media, for instance in Austria, as far as I see it. Why? If we take measures that cost a fortune and limit our freedom considerably, I think we should know if they work. Instead we are entirely polarised in an important topic. These aspects have to be discussed in public, do we not want to loose the majority of our population in the political process.
Did we make a mistake in the past, did we err on the side of safety, fine. I want to know though for the future. Were our measures working and appropriate? Also fine, then explain these and other inconsistencies.
So what is going on? My gut feeling is that we still don't really have a reasonable clue what is going on with Covid, especially as far as epidemiology is concerned. But our »experts« nonetheless happily share their opinions as if they are indisputable facts, even though the next expert claims the opposite. At the same time we make a moral not a reason problem out of it, which is really not a good idea, should we want to learn from this disaster, that was our reaction to the pandemic.
There is certainly the possibility that this data is crap, but that does not make the situation better: why would John Hopkins & Co then publish and aggregate data that is nonsensical? Just because you can? Makes us all feel like real scientists or at least rational citizens, when we use Our World in Data, believing, we make better decisions with more data, but do we?
Regarding the United Kingdom: I think they are currently profiting from their higher immunity rate, but from looking at their death toll, the price was high.
I think it is important to have the right mix of measures (masks, quarantine, vaccinations, etc.), under current circumstances (immunity rates, compliance rates, virus variant, etc.) to be applied at the right time (some measures applied at the right time seem to be very effective), and that they are followed consequently.
Especially the last part - the compliance - is a major problem for many countries. We (people) are not used to follow rules except our own. This means that our government has to "sell" the rules (the measures) so that everybody makes them to their own rules. This does not help to fight a pandemic, in particular if more and more people don't trust the seller. I guess that this explains the difference to Iceland and Norway.
thanks for your comment. I think that even the cumulative graph does not explain the situation. When you look at the graph you linked, you will see that the UK (and US) had a dramatic start in 2020. Roughly 500 more than Austria, which was flat. This difference stayed pretty much the same for the rest of the time. So. That cannot really be the explanation.
I guess that (data) scientists will come up with explanations, but I do not expect them to be available soon. As you see from our brief discussion, there are many potential explanations and Omikron was a game changer. Soon we will see new virus variants which will mix up everything again.
One the one hand I'm with you that we need a public discussion about the measures, on the other hand the problem is, however, what do we want to discuss? Currently it's only an exchange of opinions. (Additionally there is a not so small number of people who are not even interested in facts.)
In my opinion, what we really need to discuss is how we as a society want to deal with problems at this level (= no simple solution, takes a long time, huge impact) and make decisions that are supported by huge majorities. I can't find this discussion either.
Exactly I agree with you, especially with the second part, not so much with the first (data science).
I today had a discussion with a very clever scientist how is away from academia now. A discussion I had with a number of clever scientists in the recent months. The common theme is, that we are shocked about the degrading of academic science in the last, lets say, decades. It is bad and still getting worse. Quality is in decline, opportunism and activism claiming to be science is rising. It is no wonder, that the general public starts to loose faith in science.
As far as data science is considered: I believe a lot can be done with data, if it is done wisely, and most often it is not. This is one of the reasons for my posting. I believe that most of the Covid data we see at the moment is plain crap. (After more that two years of pandemic, we still are not even able to collect data reliably!!) And still we put it together on »data science« websites, etc. Or have a look at the Covid modellers: one model worse than the other and still every new model was presented to the public as if they were useful for operative decision making. The lack of quality is in the league of economic modelling, which is a disgrace for science.
As Gert Gigerenzer wrote in a book years ago: “Viele Menschen lächeln über altmodische Wahrsager. Doch sobald die Hellseher mit Computern arbeiten, nehmen wir ihre Vorhersagen ernst und sind bereit, für sie zu zahlen.” (Many people laugh about old fashioned fortune teller, but as soon as they work with computers, we take their predictions seriously and are willing to pay for it.
This is just one aspect of the problem, among many others.
It seems that academia is suffering from the same problems as many other fields (politics, economy, etc.). I didn't know that the situation is that bad. Not sure if we (humanity) are able to tame the complexity.
Es freut mich, dass Sie sich die Zeit genommen haben, mein Blog zu lesen. Natürlich sind viele Dinge, die ich hier diskutiere aus einem subjektiven Blickwinkel geschrieben. Vielleicht teilen Sie einige Ansichten auch nicht: Es würde mich jedenfalls freuen, Kommentare zu lesen...
Noch ein Zitat zum Schluß:
"Ich verhielt mich so, als wartete ein Heer von Zwergen nur darauf, meine Einsicht in das Tagesproblem, zur Urteilsfindung von Gesellschaft und Politik zu übersetzen. Und nun stellt sich heraus: Dieses Heer gibt es nicht.
Ganz im Gegenteil erweist sich das kulturelle Getriebe als selbstimmunisierend gegen Kritik und Widerlegung. Es ist dem Lernen feind und wehrt sich in kollektiver Geschlossenheit gegen Umdeutung und Innovation.", Rupert Riedl, Evolution und Erkenntnis, Piper (1985)
6 Kommentare:
Hi Alex,
the confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people chart shows a huge difference between countries. Especially see the period Q4/2020 and Q1/2021.
Regarding the United Kingdom: I think they are currently profiting from their higher immunity rate, but from looking at their death toll, the price was high.
I think it is important to have
the right mix of measures (masks, quarantine, vaccinations, etc.),
under current circumstances (immunity rates, compliance rates, virus variant, etc.)
to be applied at the right time (some measures applied at the right time seem to be very effective),
and that they are followed consequently.
Especially the last part - the compliance - is a major problem for many countries. We (people) are not used to follow rules except our own. This means that our government has to "sell" the rules (the measures) so that everybody makes them to their own rules. This does not help to fight a pandemic, in particular if more and more people don't trust the seller. I guess that this explains the difference to Iceland and Norway.
Hi Reinhard
thanks for your comment. I think that even the cumulative graph does not explain the situation. When you look at the graph you linked, you will see that the UK (and US) had a dramatic start in 2020. Roughly 500 more than Austria, which was flat. This difference stayed pretty much the same for the rest of the time. So. That cannot really be the explanation.
cheers
Alex
I guess that (data) scientists will come up with explanations, but I do not expect them to be available soon. As you see from our brief discussion, there are many potential explanations and Omikron was a game changer. Soon we will see new virus variants which will mix up everything again.
One the one hand I'm with you that we need a public discussion about the measures, on the other hand the problem is, however, what do we want to discuss? Currently it's only an exchange of opinions. (Additionally there is a not so small number of people who are not even interested in facts.)
In my opinion, what we really need to discuss is how we as a society want to deal with problems at this level (= no simple solution, takes a long time, huge impact) and make decisions that are supported by huge majorities. I can't find this discussion either.
Exactly I agree with you, especially with the second part, not so much with the first (data science).
I today had a discussion with a very clever scientist how is away from academia now. A discussion I had with a number of clever scientists in the recent months. The common theme is, that we are shocked about the degrading of academic science in the last, lets say, decades. It is bad and still getting worse. Quality is in decline, opportunism and activism claiming to be science is rising. It is no wonder, that the general public starts to loose faith in science.
As far as data science is considered: I believe a lot can be done with data, if it is done wisely, and most often it is not. This is one of the reasons for my posting. I believe that most of the Covid data we see at the moment is plain crap. (After more that two years of pandemic, we still are not even able to collect data reliably!!) And still we put it together on »data science« websites, etc. Or have a look at the Covid modellers: one model worse than the other and still every new model was presented to the public as if they were useful for operative decision making. The lack of quality is in the league of economic modelling, which is a disgrace for science.
As Gert Gigerenzer wrote in a book years ago: “Viele Menschen lächeln über altmodische Wahrsager. Doch sobald die Hellseher mit Computern arbeiten, nehmen wir ihre Vorhersagen ernst und sind bereit, für sie zu zahlen.” (Many people laugh about old fashioned fortune teller, but as soon as they work with computers, we take their predictions seriously and are willing to pay for it.
This is just one aspect of the problem, among many others.
It seems that academia is suffering from the same problems as many other fields (politics, economy, etc.). I didn't know that the situation is that bad. Not sure if we (humanity) are able to tame the complexity.
Exactly. Complexity is a major issue. But on top of that we have major institutional failure. Both together multiply each other.
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