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This is: Covid-19: My Current Model, published by Zvion the LessWrong.
The post will be a summary of my current key views on various aspects what is going on, especially in places where I see many or most responsible-looking people getting it importantly wrong.
This post is not making strong evidence-based arguments for these views. This is not that post. This is me getting all this out there, on the record, in a place one can reference.
Risks Follow Power Laws
It is impossible to actually understand Covid-19 if you think of some things as ‘risky’ and other things as ‘safe’ and group together all the things in each category. And yet, that’s exactly how most of our thinking is directed.
Instead, think of risks as following power laws.
The riskiest activities are indoors, involve close physical proximity with others, while those for extended periods of time others cough, sing, puff or otherwise powerfully exhale, or talk directly at us, or we are in actual physical contact that then reaches one’s eyes, nose or mouth.
Activities missing any of those components are much, much safer than activities that share all those components.
Then other actions, such as masks and hand washing and not-face-touching, can reduce that risk by further large percentages.
Slight reductions in the frequency and severity of your very risky actions is much more important than reducing the frequency of nominally risky actions.
The few times you end up talking directly with someone in the course of business, the one social gathering you attend, the one overly crowded store you had to walk through, will dominate your risk profile. Be paranoid about that, and think how to make it less risky, or ideally avoid it. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
And think about the physical world and what’s actually happening around you!
Sacrifices To The Gods Are Demanded Everywhere
A sacrifice to the Gods (post of this topic to be linked in when finally written) is an action with physical costs but with no interest in any meaningful physical benefits, taken in the hope that it will make one less blameworthy. Things are bad because we have sinned. The Gods demand sacrifice. If we do not act appropriately repentant and concerned, things will surely get worse.
Once we act appropriately, we are virtuous and will doubtless be saved. We can stop. There is no need to proceed in a way that would actually work, once the Gods have been placated. Everything will work out.
If you don’t make the proper sacrifices, then anything that goes wrong means it’s your fault. Or at least, you’ll always worry it is your fault. As will others. If you do make the proper sacrifices, nothing is your fault. Much better.
If the action is efficient and actually were to solve the problem in a meaningful way, that would invalidate the whole operation. You can either show you are righteous and trust in the Gods, or you go about actually solving the problem. For obvious reasons, you can’t do both.
A steelman of this is that Complexity is Bad and nuance impossible. If we start doing things based on whether they make sense that sets a terrible example and most people will be hopelessly lost.
Thus, we sanitize packages. We stay exactly six feet apart. We wait exactly two weeks. We close all ‘non-essential’ businesses, but not ‘essential’ ones. We issue stay at home orders and give huge checks to the unemployed. Then we turn around and ‘reopen’ at which point that unemployment is voluntary, the state doesn’t have to pay, and so people are forced to go back to work. We lie to ban masks, then we try to mandate them, and wonder why people don’t trust the authorities. We hail our health care workers as heroes but don’t let them run experiments or gather much data. And of course, we enforce regulations enforce regulations enforce regulations, while shouting about how g...
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