Exactly. This is the furthest thing from a black swan. A global pandemic was always a matter of when, not if (still is). That, by definition, is not a black swan. Plus, we in EU/NA had plenty of notice since January to prepare, and we chose to bury our head in the sand instead.

Prominent people call this a black swan just to deflect responsibility, and perhaps to get a bit of bailout money on the side.

Indeed. A black swan is something you never thought could exist before because you've only seen white swans. We've had pandemics in the past, though not as serious as this one. This is not a black swan, and calling it a black swan just undermines what a black swan is.

> We've had pandemics in the past, though not as serious as this one.

There have been much more serious pandemics in the past, way too many to even list here. I'll briefly mention two because we know them well in the western canon -- the 1918 flu epidemic and the black death.

> ...and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Everybody forgets that part (which sort of proves the point, eh?)

Please. I don't remember almost all economic activity ceasing because of AIDS, SARS, or Ebola. I certainly don't remember most of the US being under stay-at-home orders. This particular pandemic is an extreme outlier, so it's a black swan.

But ArialMinaei there's not that much more they could have done. It still would have had 20x the mortality rate of the usual flu strain and it still would have had an RO of 3 or 4. Once something that fits those parameters is loosed on the world, the rest is a fait accompli- we're going into social distancing, lockdown, whatever it's being called.

Yes respirators and masks, I know, but the previous administration had gone through the same thing on a smaller scale and stockpiles were not replenished possibly because experts said it won't happen again for a while (I am giving the previous administration the benefit of the doubt here.. I don't know why they didn't replace those items).

The point here is, there's not that much that even had all information been available, and masks, and respirators, the world could have done. It's literally a force of nature that humans have a limited ability to deal with instantly.

I am not defending any political or public policy department past or present. I am just stating the obvious. Everything else is 20/20 hindsight aimed at the margins of effectiveness, so why go there ?

c.f. South Korea. c.f. Germany c.f. Canada

even ... c.f. California.

These are all jurisdictions that took early, effective, widespread action that have resulted in dramatically lower rates of cases and deaths.

Yeah those three nations are not that different from each other relative to the spread that exists between them and other nations.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-cases-traject...

If you look at who has the LEAST per million (absolute number of cases are worse than useless and what most statisitic sites are showing) it's not nations usually associated with good governance, ahem...

So what's going on.

It's traffic. Flights into a nation, and especially flights from China. The nations with the best per capita numbers are low-air-traffic nations, per capita, so Belize, South Africa, Thailand, Andorra places like that.

So mystery solved. The difference between the US and Germany, the best of the "developed" nations, is not that big at all. For a long time, weeks and weeks, it's been mid 700s for BOTH nations. I am not sure where the very latest data is getting we're at 100 per million now, but still they're comparable in the larger scheme of things.

It's not some foreign virus anymore. It's endemic everywhere. How many people die in any given place is now directly a result of the containment measures put into place there. You can't keep blaming this on China. Even places that have very tenuous connections to China are now experiencing massive death rates, because they aren't handling it well.

"How many people die in any given place is now directly a result of the containment measures put into place there"

Without supporting an alternative theory, this sounds doubtful to me. Do you think, for instance, that the difference between West Virginia and New York is a result of the superior containment measures in the former? WV has a lower death rate so far than even South Korea.

It's way too early to be making these comparisons. Wait until the pandemic is over and then we can analyze the death rates. Otherwise you're just talking about where it spread first, which is not the same as how well each place managed the totality of it.

You're conflating ideas.

The virus started in China. The virus spread from China because of of the Communist Chinese Party's denial and lack of response.

Those are, in turn intimately connected to the fact that China is a one-party dictatorship that murdered the doctors who first tried to bring their attention to COVID-19 in the early days of the virus, lest the world forget.

Currently, Chinese epidemological numbers cannot be trusted because the Chinese Communist Party, on top of being a murderer of its own truth-telling scientists, is a pathological liar and manipulator of information, like all Communist regimes.

That's all I said about China; maybe someone said something more, so talk to them.

How many people die, the death rate from COVID-19, is about the same in most nations and mostly a function of age and previously existing health issues.

Aside from these facts, I don't even know what in my post you could be reacting to.

We didn’t need different CCP numbers to have taken more effective action in the UK, we just needed to listen to public health experts rather than statistical epidemiologists and motivated thinkers in government. Germany, Austria, S Korea are all just as, if not more, connected to China than the UK and Spain but are faring much better because they have competent govt, distributed and robustly funded public health systems. This is not a black swan event because it has long been predicted by mainstream epidemiologists.

I think people may be rushing to judgment, as a snapshot in time right now may not tell you where things will end up in each country.

I was looking at a chart of the trajectory of the epidemic in different countries, and it was interesting because there were at least three qualitatively different types of curves.

South Korea and China are notable for nearly completely flattening out after a certain point. The former might tend to undermine conspiracy theories about China, I don't know. On the other hand, why have no other countries had the same experience? Could it be the response, or characteristics of data gathering and reporting?

Japan and Singapore have risen much more slowly than the US and hard-hit European countries, but do not seem to be flattening which is surprising and seems ominous.

The western countries that have a lot of cases seem to have a characteristic sort of gradual curve, that rose faster early on, gradually is leveling out, but not completely (yet). The US looks similar to the others, except it is larger and continuing to suggest a higher peak.

I am wondering if Japan, and maybe the US states that are not initially seeing a lot of cases, will end up being a second wave after things seem to be under control in a lot of places.

Washington especially, if you want to talk about US states that handled it well.

The CDC had a pandemic team, they were let go. California had a reserve of ventilators, which were liquidated due to “budget reasons”.

The problem isn’t risk experts; the problem is that government representatives elected have no domain expertise nor leadership fortitude to put domain experts into the driver’s seat when the situation dictates.

China, for all its failings, gets this right. Their leadership is more STEM and less lawyers and politicians.

There's a populist war on expertise. Arguably justified when fake expertise is available for hire. Think big tobacco paying for studies (expertise) to say smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. When this becomes rampant, eventually there's a public trust issue.

Experts should not be expected to side either way on morality. Much like technology, expertise is neither good nor bad, it’s just what it is.

Furthermore, I seriously doubt that there is anything close to a “populist” war on expertise. The US public has had a somewhat adversarial relationship with Science throughout its history (possibly because College is not considered mandatory, but that’s me speculating). The lack of education and the unrelenting advertisement infrastructure around climate denial is probably what has painted scientists especially in a bad light.

> Furthermore, I seriously doubt that there is anything close to a “populist” war on expertise.

Um, what? Look no further than the manufactured controversy over climate science, or evolution.

China spent 3-4 weeks covering up evidence of human to human transmission of the virus (Singapore started screening travelers Jan 3 due to a pneumonia cluster in Wuhan; China started acting Jan 22...).

That's not getting it right, it's a different type of shit show.

Something doesn’t stack up here. If China’s response is such a shit show why don’t they have widespread transmission around the country? The US and Europe have had more warning than Chinese regions, but have been far less effective at managing the disease.

Their reaction to the massive outbreak has been effective.

My point is that they reacted the second half of January, after trying to cover up the outbreak for weeks/months. If the local and regional officials had acted effectively in late December, there might not be a global pandemic.

> Culpability lies with China for covering it up

Sure, China did some bad things and shares some blame. That said, we did figure out China was lying in January, but did nothing nothing for the next six weeks (besides an ineffective travel "ban"). We have some culpability as well.

Just for the record, every single time I make a post even mildly criticizing China in any thread, it gets downvoted almost immediately.

Most people who do that are posting nationalistic flamebait whether they mean to or not, and the majority of readers here do not want flamewars on the site.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I'm afraid that your post upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834681) is an example. We don't need that sort of low-information, high-indignation arguing on inflammatory topics.

OK let me get this straight, just so I understand.

It's flamebait to recite the material and relevant facts about the Chinese Communist Party / dictatorship including the fact that they murdered the doctors who were trying to warn them and investigate it, after which this same dicatorship lied to the world about the spread of the disease and permitted tens of thousands of people to leave Wuhan provence, carrying what they knew to was a highly infectious virus with them. And now thousands are dead.

That is nationalism and flamebait and not the mere recitation of known facts ?

Seriously just trying to get my mind around the standards we're held to here at HN. We are supposed to deny or massage reality if it makes psychopathologically murderous and murderously irresponsible regimes look, you know, bad?

If that's not what you're telling me, then please, explain. Cite just one sentence or phrase which I wrote you think misrepresents reality and constitutes "flamebait".

I'm here all week.

You're assuming that reciting facts can't be flamebait. Actually it easily can. Your reply here is even more in the flamewar style.

These comments are clearly fighting a political/national battle, and you can't do that and have curious conversation at the same time. Those are two different states of the nervous system. We want curious conversation here.

In case it feels like I'm saying this because I secretly support the other side: I'm really not. Comments in the flamewar style the other way get moderated just the same, when we see them.

When you're inclined to use labels like psychopathological murder or murderous irresponsibility, it's probably better to wait until your system shifts into a different frame. In case it feels like I'm picking on your personally: we all have our version of this, definitely including me.

Re facts: the thing to realize is that there are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves; humans do that. Which facts you select, which stand out to you as important, is not itself a fact—it's a consequence of how you see the situation and which side you identify with. Those on the opposing side select other facts.

If you show up in a thread with a bag of stones to throw at the other side, it doesn't make it ok if the stones are facts. What matters is the stone-throwing: it destroys the shared connection that makes good conversation possible. Actually, it's worse if the weapons are facts. They make harder stones, and harder hearts too.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I find I just can't relate to what you're saying although I can tell you're perfectly sincere and what you say makes sense insofar as its coherent and on topic. I get your point, I just disagree. What you're citing as selective fact presentation is called presenting a coherent point of view, buttressed by facts. If the facts hurt, then that's information to the injured party and information they need to have.

To give an analogy, our court system is adverserial and most debating societies follow the similar rules. The reason for this is because the best arguments are just that- arguments. In a debating society both sides present their cases as strongly as they can and the audience (here readers) decide. Asking someone not to form accurate, relevant, and decisive facts into an argument because the facts themselves will inflame people is, let's just say very Europeanish. It's akin to bannning so called "hate speech", which is nothing but speech that pisses off the people it exposes in some way.

I can't support a platform that has hatespeech moderation built into it.

What is going on is that people who do do what you're saying I am doing, attacking with selectively edited facts which distort reality, are ruining your platform. They suck up mindwidth and attention and litter the place with n-nested, tit-for-tat, lastwordistic threads. They ruin the joint. Then it's not an engaging place to be anymore and the Good People leave. Just so you know I know what you're talking about.

It's your place, not mine and you can do as you see fit. I can't participate as a commenter, that's all. There's just zero chance I'll change my approach, so it's better that I just refrain, which I am happy to do.

Reddit got it right btw, and then it went full totalitarian and those two things aren't unrelated. When you let people develop their ideas fully, using all the means their intelligence and imaginations can muster, then complex issues become clear. When that clarity doesn't favor your preferred narrative, as it didn't favor the narratives of the handful of Reddit mods who run that place, then you're put in the position of hosting your own ideological destruction. Not many Sam Adamses are ever birthed in the first place and certainly not enough to keep Reddit stocked with moderators, so, of course, they shut dissenting subreddits down faster than a kissing booth at the Wuhan county fair.

I voluntarily retire my commenting privileges.

> The CDC has a pandemic team, they were let go.

Can we please stop parroting that distortion of the facts?

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/dems-misconstrue-trump-bud...

> China, for all its failings, gets this right. Their leadership is more STEM and less lawyers and politicians.

You don't know anything about China's leadership. They're all politicians. Not a decision gets made without it being vetted ideologically -- ideology always comes first. And we should look at the timelines from China before saying they "got it right."[1]

[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devas...

Your link suggests that the statement is true, but you probably already know that and are posting in a bad faith effort to mislead people.

>> The CDC has a pandemic team, they were let go. >Can we please stop parroting that distortion of the facts?

I'm not a fan of fact-checker battles but Snopes says "Claim: The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. True."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

There's no battle, both links say pretty much the same thing.

briandear is right and toomuchtodo is wrong. (He's even wrong in the way he was wrong.)

One would think reading only the Snopes article, or the Twitter thread (!) the piece is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was eliminated and everyone in a large DC office building was fired.

Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles the Snopes piece cites in the body, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council (not CDC, contrary to what toomuchtodo claims) hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was.

COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.

You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.

PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104

PPS - Trump was not acquitted in the Senate until February 5. Thought experiment: What do you think would have happened if he had implemented the only thing that would have 100% kept COVID19 out of the US, completely shut down all borders (including with Canada) before January 15, the day "patient zero" entered Seattle from Wuhan? (The WHO was still stating that person-to-person contact for COVID19 did not seem to be occurring.)

There are other options of actions he could have taken that wouldn’t have involved shutting borders. Over the years, as well as not making obviously false statements, starting in late January. Those falsities created a republican resistance to the necessary actions, making it some sort of misguided windmill tilt about freedom.

Further, the entire culture he created — don’t speak truth to power, or you will be fired - is also responsible for the late actions and poor preparedness of the administration.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who bothered reading these links. I can only assume earlier posters are blinded by partisanship. Anything even tangentially related to politics requires a good degree of skepticism in the face of bias that's evident throughout this entire thread.

Yes. Thank you so much for saying this. It seems like there is only a handful of people who are trying to keep the focus on the truth in the midst of this partisan battle of competing narratives.

I think the problem is how we look at risk in the context of our cognitive biases.

Although given a long enough timeline a pandemic is all but guaranteed, on a annual or election cycle it scores pretty low on the probability scale. Our gauge of the severity may have been misrepresented due to the once-in-a-century nature of this event.

Juxtapose that with issues that people face in the immediate term like budget shortfalls, service disruptions creating disgruntled electorates, etc. I think it's easy for powers-to-be to convince themselves to gut preparations for a pandemic in favor of more 'guaranteed-to-happen' short term crises. Combining poor risk assessments with a recency bias can incentivize these kinds of decisions.

Interesting perspective. It's as though the gov (read: we/us) have become distracted by the "risk" of a lot of the day to day social issues and minutiae at the expense of the real threats.

my fault, updated to say high risk event.