Thread by @balajis

A COVID-19 positive man walks into a Seoul bar...and 1900 people need to get traced-and-tested, with 40 positives found already and 2000 venues shut down a week after they reopened.

It's hard to stop this from recurring. The whole physical leisure economy based on large crowds of strangers (clubs, bars, restaurants, concerts, airlines, etc) is just less economically feasible.

Citations follow.
news.sky.com/story/coronavi…

koreabiomed.com/news/articleVi…

What are a country's options?

Two poles are emerging: the total state or market anarchy.

Let's talk about the total state first, starting with the codes China put into WeChat.

Green? You can travel
Yellow? Exposed, stay home
Red? Supervised quarantine
nytimes.com/2020/03/01/bus…

So, a system like that in South Korea would make test-and-trace much easier. A total state, literally tracking everyone at all times.

If a yellow or red code moved, let alone walked into a sea of greens, you'd see it. And you'd message all the greens, and mark them yellow.

Now, that system is indeed total surveillance.

Yet on the other hand, you can't repeat the exercise of manually tracing-and-testing 1900 people every time a COVID-19 positive walks into a bar.

For an urban economy with crowds of strangers, this is one option nations may choose.

The other option is market anarchy.

Refuse a WeChat-like system, but either (a) give up the urban economy & go rural or (b) build a new isolated urban economy of people who are immune, vaccinated, or don't care about the virus.

In market anarchy option (a) you believe that the virus is a real danger, and an inhibitor to normal economic activity, but you also don't want to be tracked.

So you go to a rural setting. Space yourself out, avoid urban crowds of strangers, slash your consumption, be autarkic.

In option (b) you don't believe the virus is a real danger. The issue though is that ~50% of fellow citizens don't agree, so demand will crash.

So to actually build a functional urban economy without WeChat-style tracking, you'll need people who are immune, vaccinated, or DGAF.

Now, the best option of all is to get a drug, vaccine, or some other form of treatment that solves the pandemic. Then you don't need to choose between bad options.

(Herd immunity will also "work", but at the cost of many dead & hard-to-foresee consequences.)

So, focus on tech.

Upon deliberation, that means there are three options.

1) The total state: sacrifice privacy to control the virus

2) Market anarchy: preserve privacy, but don't control the virus

3) Superior technology: develop biomedical tech so good the virus and any successors don't matter