The 3 players in our drama are Science, a way of knowing; Technnology whose business is translating the more certain Science into practical effects; and Public Policy which takes some of Science, some of technology and serves it with political calculation.
At any point there are things Science doesn't know and in principle cannot know. Similarly there are things beyond the capability of technology to solve at any given time, like a counter to polio in the 1940s. But politicians are far more ready to promise they can solve anything.
The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the limits of science and technology in the face of this pathogen. Those limits were plainly expressed in the scientific and technological literature which were full of contention, dead end hypothesis etc. Only the politicians were sure.
The political nostrums hid behind the veneer of settled science. And when populations locked themselves up, abandoned their livelihoods and professions nobody told them "maybe", they presented the policy as a fact you could take to the bank. Home before the leaves fall.
Science requires doubt. Technology demands constant testing and retesting. But public policy demands a childlike trust. As Europe enters its second crisis after having "beaten" the first the air of political confidence gives way as it should to skepticism.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Irreproducibility is a problem with complex systems where small changes in initial conditions, latent variables or effects on system boundaries can change the result.
"The issue became clear in 2011, when the pharmaceutical company Bayer conducted its own reproducibility tests on 67 published experiments and failed to get similar results on 53."
"What many would describe as the 'replication crisis' in science has gained the attention of researchers and policymakers at the highest levels."
Is there a model where variables expressed in specific quarantine acts, surveillance and previous biosphere immunity can be tested? What is the probability of an n+1 wave given n lockdowns?
Without the testable model and well defined variables the Chinese "formula" is not a formula. Presumably the Europeans made choices to reduce the expected number of future hospitalizations. The second wave throws doubt on that, but reduced CFR suggests unknown variables.
If the pandemic is becoming markedly less deadly is that due to previous choices or the introduction of new therapies? Or is it the result of natural evolution outside the scope of gov't action? That is to say caused by variables not in our model?
The "BD family" scandal is catastrophe for Chinese Communist Party operatives in the US. It exposed how they operated nearly at will during the former "Happy Time".The complacency may be ending, if the media can be persuaded to take notice, but the CCP is far from beaten.
The rollup of the CIA network in China, the loss of the OPM data should have warned the media something evil was loose. But the then-dominant narrative was the Global World, so the signal was filtered out.
The "2nd Happy Time" known among German submarine commanders as the "American Shooting Season" was the informal name for the Operation Paukenschlag ... as defense measures were weak and disorganized and the U-boats were able to inflict massive damage with little risk.
"Well, your toe bone connected to your foot bone
Your foot bone connected to your heel bone
Your heel bone connected to your ankle bone
Your ankle bone connected to your leg bone ..."
Dem unintended lockdown consequences.
You cannot draw a definite boundary around a sufficiently complex system. It will always be interacting in ways politicians fail to anticipate.
One of the biggest challenges in crafting strategy is deciding where you are going to stop; determining the limit of your advance. One of the apparent lessons the progressive project got from 2016 is resolve to drive as deep as possible if they ever seized power again.
Plans include expanding SCOTUS, mass citizenship to illegal aliens, a socialized medicine option, abolish 'fossil fuels' maybe ditching the electoral college. They'll make sure the populist rebellion is really dead by shooting, evisceration, burning and ploughing it with salt.
But this creates a planning weakness for the progressives because their stop line is determined by their desires, not by their strategic capabilities. One wonders to what extent their assessments are driven by multisource intelligence as opposed to wishful thinking.