Putting highly sensitive, unproven assumptions into models with hundreds/thousands of lines of opaque code spitting out numbers that get handed to bureaucrats to tell tens of millions of people how to live is not how any of this is supposed to work
The epistemological and political philosophy failure that this entire chain of policy formation entails represents what's wrong in most other areas of public policy. This technocratic authoritarianism remains THE barrier to progress in C21st, thrusting us toward impoverishment.
The fact that 'the models' were hopelessly wrong irks me far less than the fact they were used to devise a course of action that violated human agency in the most egregious and unconscionable fashion. That's where the real shame lies, not with play-play spreadsheets.
I use abstractions of the world for a living. They are to be deployed cautiously, built parsimoniously, subject to cross-method corroboration, and used to guide, not instruct. Using such abstractions to impel blanket diktat over entire countries is miles beyond the pale.
CV19 has revealed those who understand real bottom-up liberty and accountability, and those who don't. Hint: if you thought book-smart technocrats get to tell money-grubbing bureaucrats how we should all live, then you're blissfully immune to eons of historical instruction.
This is only superficially about 'bad models'. It's way more crucially about whether we want to live in a world where data fiddlers get to run social experiments on us (epidemiology, central banking, [fill in the blank]), or one of distributed, local, accountable problem-solving.
Covid-19 is our reminder that we haven't yet shaken off the worst political pathologies of the C20th. If there's going to be real progress in C21st, then best we shake off this idiocy asap. To those who initially supported this unconscionable lockdown: no excuses next time.
