Did Sweden end up taking the best approach?

260,853 Views | 1675 Replies | Last: 6 mo ago by Enzomatic
fig96
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In mid-March we'd started to see a rapid increase in cases and social distancing was strongly encouraged.

People were still filling the bars and Florida's beaches were packed for Spring Break.
California Ag 90
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k2aggie07 said:


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i suspect by April we'd have seen similar compliance as the Swedes
Right, I totally agree. But at what cost in both economic damage and lives? The measures that have been taken in the US have completely precluded panic. Two thousand deaths a day barely registers in the public conscience.

Hypothetically speaking, if we wind up in the same place two months later, we would have what amounts to the same economic damage (or even worse) with a worse outcome in terms of epidemic management. If the epidemic got worse to where people spontaneously reacted, the outbreak would have been larger, the time to peak longer, etc.

This is a rare case where individual rationality contributes to bad outcomes. Individual motivations and collective ones are fundamentally mismatched, because for the majority of the population a precautionary quarantine is irrational in the face of the personal and collective economic cost vs the personal health benefit. We're so soaked in our capitalist mindframe that this is a does not compute for most Americans. We need people to behave irrationally on a personal level to achieve a rational response on the collective one. That takes civic virtue, which we don't have a lot of.
gosh this is simply so grim an outlook and such a complete lack of faith in your fellow citizens, i don't know where to start. this logic can justify any 'collective action' that runs counter to the individual good. this country has the most robust civic institutions and civic engagement of any nation on earth, today and in human history - the most ironclad evidence of civic virtue that can exist.

i know that's not your point but this thought process leads to very dark places.

its an awful thing to say that 2000 deaths a day doesn't register in the public conscience. that public has spent weeks locked at home in the face of constantly shifting guidance from its authorities, while its personal well being has been eroded - drastically and irreparably for many. this is the public that has no conscience?

this public has demonstrated tremendous patience and conscience in spite of the bombardment with wildly varying 'facts', 'projections', 'lectures', and endless parades of dancing & singing celebrities suffering in their mansions.

lets try giving Americans some credit, once in a while. treat them like adults - like Swedes - they will surprise you by behaving like adults


We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
California Ag 90
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fig96 said:

In mid-March we'd started to see a rapid increase in cases and social distancing was strongly encouraged.

People were still filling the bars and Florida's beaches were packed for Spring Break.
we covered spring break already, with hotels and flights already booked, and 'young people' not at risk as communicated at the time (yes in mid-march) you can't have been surprised so many kids showed up - but fewer than shown on TV with its constant replay of the same scene in south Florida over and over for a month.

bars in sweden still are busy with people who weigh their risks vis-a-vis pre-existing conditions, age, etc., and make adult choices. and somehow their health system has survived and their government has continued to treat them as adults.



We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
fig96
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California Ag 90 said:

fig96 said:

In mid-March we'd started to see a rapid increase in cases and social distancing was strongly encouraged.

People were still filling the bars and Florida's beaches were packed for Spring Break.
we covered spring break already, with hotels and flights already booked, and 'young people' not at risk as communicated at the time (yes in mid-march) you can't have been surprised so many kids showed up - but fewer than shown on TV with its constant replay of the same scene in south Florida over and over for a month.

bars in sweden still are busy with people who weigh their risks vis-a-vis pre-existing conditions, age, etc., and make adult choices. and somehow their health system has survived and their government has continued to treat them as adults.
Right...and grown ups say "I booked this trip but it's not a good idea."

Sorry, I just have way less faith in the general populace than you do.

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-hundreds-crowd-reopened-florida-beaches-amid-coronavirus-2020-4
Zobel
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Of course that logic justifies any collective action that runs counter to the individual (rational) choice. Like the draft.

I'm saying the 2000 deaths a day didn't panic people, because they were expecting it. They had already been prepared by undergoing unprecedented actions when the threat was still very, very small. If the action was spontaneous this level of shutdown would only have happened when a sufficient number of individuals were afraid. That's panic. That's not good. We're not panicking - that is good.

The average American hardly votes in local elections (something like <20% nationwide). Less than half vote in nationwide ones. Only around 25% of jury summons actually have people arrive (~10% simply don't show up). Less than 1% volunteer for military service. Those are a few things Aristotle outlines in Politics as indicators of civic virtue. On the other hand around one in five are on some kind of welfare.

At any rate, I don't mean to derail the thread, but there's very little room in modern American political discourse for self-sacrifice, selflessness, others-first. That's my definition of civic virtue. Our society is not like Sweden's, and it is not like Japan's or South Korea's. "Asking" Americans to go against their own self interest doesn't really work, in a big picture way.
California Ag 90
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K2 and fig we agree to disagree.

saw this earlier today and it seems germane.

Quote:

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent" Justice Louis Brandeis, . (1928)



We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
Player To Be Named Later
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Just curious.... but what is the Government's "benefit" to all of this?
Squadron7
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Quote:

"Asking" Americans to go against their own self interest doesn't really work, in a big picture way.

This assumes those doing the "asking" actually know what is in the people's best interest.
Zobel
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Of course. But that's always the case with any invested power. Bad leaders make worse decisions than the average person. Good leaders make better ones. That's why we have executive offices, in both private and public sector.
California Ag 90
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Player To Be Named Later said:

Just curious.... but what is the Government's "benefit" to all of this?
beneficent in this quote refers to the notion that the Government is being generous or virtuous.

We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
Zobel
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"Government" is elected by the same people you're saying can be relied upon to make good decisions. That's kind of the problem.
Player To Be Named Later
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I guess that's not my read on this. This is pretty much exactly what the Govt does not want to be going on right now. Their actions are definitely not self serving for the most part right now.

Many cities are going in the red BIG TIME...... from a financial perspective, cities would probably in large part MUCH prefer to have things open right now.
DadHammer
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Player To Be Named Later said:

Just curious.... but what is the Government's "benefit" to all of this?

Forcing in socialist and communist ideas. Think green new deal bs.
Player To Be Named Later
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DadHammer said:

Player To Be Named Later said:

Just curious.... but what is the Government's "benefit" to all of this?

Forcing in socialist and communist ideas. Think green new deal bs.
So Trump has been just going along with that all this time?

There are a lot of conservative states that have been doing the same thing. So unless you think even red states have been trying to force those things, I really think this is looking at a boogeyman that doesn't exist.

California Ag 90
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guys sorry to be a pain, but that quote refers to the word 'beneficent' which means to be virtuous or generous.

Brandeis point was that the time to be most suspicious of your government in terms of defending your liberties is when it is trying to be virtuous or generous to the public.

its not about doing something for the benefit of the government alone - the notion in his court ruling was that a free people have to be careful not to give up liberty in times when the government (via elected representatives) is attempting to 'take care of them'.

it seemed to fit our current times pretty well. its just one very famous and principled jurist's viewpoint we might think about as we are tempted to assume the worst of the American people.

We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
Player To Be Named Later
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California Ag 90 said:

its just one very famous and principled jurist's viewpoint we might think about as we are tempted to assume the worst of the American people.


I would LOVE to think that today's American society would be able to behave responsibly like perhaps the Swedes have.

But I really haven't been provided many examples of why I should believe that would be the case.
TXAggie2011
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The context of the Brandeis quote is a case where the federal government was wiretapping phones without warrants, and then using evidence collected by the wiretapping to criminally convict people of conspiracy to violate prohibition laws.

I like the quote, and its been used over the years to strengthen 4th and 5th amendment rights (most recently in the Carpenter case), but it should be understood within its context.
Dad
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fig96 said:

California Ag 90 said:

fig96 said:

In mid-March we'd started to see a rapid increase in cases and social distancing was strongly encouraged.

People were still filling the bars and Florida's beaches were packed for Spring Break.
we covered spring break already, with hotels and flights already booked, and 'young people' not at risk as communicated at the time (yes in mid-march) you can't have been surprised so many kids showed up - but fewer than shown on TV with its constant replay of the same scene in south Florida over and over for a month.

bars in sweden still are busy with people who weigh their risks vis-a-vis pre-existing conditions, age, etc., and make adult choices. and somehow their health system has survived and their government has continued to treat them as adults.
Right...and grown ups say "I booked this trip but it's not a good idea."

Sorry, I just have way less faith in the general populace than you do.

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-hundreds-crowd-reopened-florida-beaches-amid-coronavirus-2020-4

I think it's stupid to restrict the hours. It's easier to stay spread out if you can come at different times. My local grocery store did the same thing.... "everyone stay six feet apart and we are going to cut 5 hours from our schedule daily so the same amount of people shop in a much smaller window".

I liked social distancing before it was cool and I used to purposely go to a place like Wal-mart after 10pm on a weekday because there would be a lot less people there. Now they close at 8.
California Ag 90
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Player To Be Named Later said:

California Ag 90 said:

its just one very famous and principled jurist's viewpoint we might think about as we are tempted to assume the worst of the American people.


I would LOVE to think that today's American society would be able to behave responsibly like perhaps the Swedes have.

But I really haven't been provided many examples of why I should believe that would be the case.
but I think you'd grant that as a peace officer you see the seamy underbelly of American society more often than not.

and your service, I should add, is the very definition of the civic virtue too many on this board are ready to write off as something that no longer exists.

We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
California Ag 90
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TXAggie2011 said:

The context of the Brandeis quote is a case where the federal government was wiretapping phones without warrants, and then using evidence collected by the wiretapping to criminally convict people of conspiracy to violate prohibition laws.

I like the quote, and its been used over the years to strengthen 4th and 5th amendment rights (most recently in the Carpenter case), but it should be understood within its context.
agreed.

which seems germane - government reaching into the private lives of citizens in an effort to 'protect them' from, in this case, criminality. that overreach rejected by wiser heads who saw the path it led to.

same principal from this perspective.

We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
Player To Be Named Later
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California Ag 90 said:

Player To Be Named Later said:

California Ag 90 said:

its just one very famous and principled jurist's viewpoint we might think about as we are tempted to assume the worst of the American people.


I would LOVE to think that today's American society would be able to behave responsibly like perhaps the Swedes have.

But I really haven't been provided many examples of why I should believe that would be the case.
but I think you'd grant that as a peace officer you see the seamy underbelly of American society more often than not.

and your service, I should add, is the very definition of the civic virtue too many on this board are ready to write off as something that no longer exists.


That's a fair point. But watching people rush out to the beaches in Florida, etc isn't instilling confidence that we can self-regulate very easily. And I sure wish we could. It would be much preferable if we acted with a little more intelligence.

And I appreciate that.
California Ag 90
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Player To Be Named Later said:

California Ag 90 said:

Player To Be Named Later said:

California Ag 90 said:

its just one very famous and principled jurist's viewpoint we might think about as we are tempted to assume the worst of the American people.


I would LOVE to think that today's American society would be able to behave responsibly like perhaps the Swedes have.

But I really haven't been provided many examples of why I should believe that would be the case.
but I think you'd grant that as a peace officer you see the seamy underbelly of American society more often than not.

and your service, I should add, is the very definition of the civic virtue too many on this board are ready to write off as something that no longer exists.


That's a fair point. But watching people rush out to the beaches in Florida, etc isn't instilling confidence that we can self-regulate very easily. And I sure wish we could. It would be much preferable if we acted with a little more intelligence.

And I appreciate that.
thanks for all you do and deal with every day.

fwiw, i've got a couple of friends near Jacksonville who were at the beach over the weekend. social distancing was the rule, in general, and where people violated the 'karen' contingent was quick to shame folks into splitting up.

We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
Player To Be Named Later
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I equally dislike the "Karen contingent" and the "You can't tell me what to do!!" crowd. There has to be a middle ground here
DadHammer
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Interesting

https://www.dailywire.com/news/epidemiologist-warns-lockdown-policies-not-evidence-based-unsustainable-in-democracies
NASAg03
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If what he says comes true, public confidence in models and scientists and public health leaders is going to be destroyed.

November will be very interesting...
Mike Shaw - Class of '03
Federale01
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Interesting that he says we must use science-based evidence in our response but then cites fatality and infection rates with no scientific backing. Ignoring the fact that you can't wait a year to respond to a new disease while you study exactly how it spreads and therefore base your response on science, he just seems hypocritical for not taking his own advice.

I hope he is right though.
TxAG#2011
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No evidence social distancing works.. uh huh. Is the virus just teleporting between people then?
Proposition Joe
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NASAg03 said:

If what he says comes true, public confidence in models and scientists and public health leaders is going to be destroyed.

A large portion of the population stopped believing models, scientists and public health leaders long ago when it didn't align with what their preference was.
NASAg03
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People stopped believing "science" when it was bent and distorted to fit political views. It goes both ways.

And sorry we can't shut down the world and lurk in fear while we study this virus for a year and develop a vaccine. At some point we have to trust expert option until the science and peer reviewed studies catch up.

"A well-known lawyer, now a judge, once grouped witnesses into three classes: simple liars, damned liars, and experts. He did not mean that the expert uttered things which he knew to be untrue, but that by the emphasis which he laid on certain statements, and by what has been defined as a highly cultivated faculty of evasion, the effect was actually worse than if he had." - Nature journal, 1885
Mike Shaw - Class of '03
Player To Be Named Later
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What we probably "should" do is probably somewhere in the middle between the SIP crowd and the Open it All Up crowd.

But of course, our society these days doesn't believe in middle grounds, so it will be a fight to see who "wins" and gets their way. Just like anything else lately.
fig96
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He's also estimating a way higher current infection rate than most others which would seem to be a pretty critical piece of this. And he may be right, but we simply don't know that right now due to lack of testing.

The biggest flaw in this whole thing is how little data we're operating from.
California Ag 90
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Proposition Joe said:

NASAg03 said:

If what he says comes true, public confidence in models and scientists and public health leaders is going to be destroyed.

A large portion of the population stopped believing models, scientists and public health leaders long ago when it didn't align with what their preference was.
without getting sucked into the political back and forth, it bears mentioning that 'model' based projections of complex systems and phenomenon, and using complex model predictions to drive public policy is a recent development over the past couple of decades. mass increases in computational power have enabled this approach.

when you say 'long ago', this is an important piece of context. the science is new, subject to constant change and learning, and the phenomena modeled are highly nonlinear in response to variables.

people who develop complex models, be they in finance (remember 2008), economics, climate, or epidemiology, are naturally passionate advocates for their work. that's the nature of brilliant people - but the science is not well established and a bit of healthy skepticism given the track record of predictive success is not necessarily about 'aligning with preferences'.

I think it is increasingly likely that the projections in this case of modeling COVID will have been extremely pessimistic, and the mass alignment of public policy with those projections will trigger tremendous skepticism of all scientific modeling for a long time - to the detriment of many areas that are important and potentially less prone to errors given maturity of specific fields of data analysis.



We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
Zobel
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Quote:

And sorry we can't shut down the world and lurk in fear while we study this virus for a year and develop a vaccine.
I don't think anyone is saying that is a viable option. Even the people running the social distancing models agree that it isn't an option.


Quote:

At some point we have to trust expert option until the science and peer reviewed studies catch up.
Right, and then it's a game of pick your experts. How do we aggregate expert opinion? Should we poll them?
Zobel
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Quote:

I think it is increasingly likely that the projections in this case of modeling COVID will have been extremely pessimistic, and the mass alignment of public policy with those projections will trigger tremendous skepticism of all scientific modeling for a long time - to the detriment of many areas that are important and potentially less prone to errors given maturity of specific fields of data analysis.
The problem is, virtually no one is actually responding to the modeling. They're responding to political and media and popular characterizations of the models...frequently against what the authors of the models themselves are saying.

If someone were to ask me to estimate the load capacity of a beam, and I tell them it comes in at 1,000 lbs for a distributed static load - a model, with assumptions and so on - and then they drop 1,000 lbs on it with a wedge from 50 ft, and it breaks.... is that a bad model? No, it's bad use of a model.

I don't know how you fix that.
California Ag 90
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k2aggie07 said:


Quote:

I think it is increasingly likely that the projections in this case of modeling COVID will have been extremely pessimistic, and the mass alignment of public policy with those projections will trigger tremendous skepticism of all scientific modeling for a long time - to the detriment of many areas that are important and potentially less prone to errors given maturity of specific fields of data analysis.
The problem is, virtually no one is actually responding to the modeling. They're responding to political and media and popular characterizations of the models...frequently against what the authors of the models themselves are saying.

If someone were to ask me to estimate the load capacity of a beam, and I tell them it comes in at 1,000 lbs for a distributed static load - a model, with assumptions and so on - and then they drop 1,000 lbs on it with a wedge from 50 ft, and it breaks.... is that a bad model? No, it's bad use of a model.

I don't know how you fix that.
people are responding to the public policies driven by the models.

when the policies based on models end up being wrong (2008 finance example) then the backlash is severe.

that is the risk we have now with COVID modeling. if COVID models prove accurate then the backlash (outside of the usual extremists on each side of the political debate) will be minimal.

folks are getting wound up on COVID because of the growing sense that the models that drove policy were significantly pessimistic.

sounds like you and I are both engineers - and our modeling reference is historically based on ironclad laws of physics, they get complex but there are underpinning physical laws we can anchor our assumptions in.

complex data analytics and associated modeling is a different beast altogether - and at this early stage of its development (as a science) it is prone to errors. that's nobody's fault - its an early science, full of passionate advocates who see its potential. the risk is when models are used to drive policy of such tremendous magnitude - in those cases (again i think 2008 finance is a great example) errors are very costly in terms of public trust.

just my view.

We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
 
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