However, this problem is not at its root an engineering one; it is political. While the public attention is on this, we should point attention as close as possible to the most likely cause given the information we have at the time. It's bayesian truth and bayesian politics.
You'll note I didn't draw conclusions about which recommendations were ignored but having read through them all, there is no way they were all actually followed and we ended up where we are. I think some basics are fairly obvious. While some winterization perhaps was done, there is some degree of winterization that was never done; power plants in other states far north of us and colder than us are not having the same types of problems. Various professors in various cities in Texas who follow this stuff confirm this in various news outlets I haven't cited here. I also wouldn't be surprised if there was were issues with gas transport from wells through pipelines to plants that were noted in 2011 but much more severe this time due to even colder temps and unexpected by all. But still...
At the end of the day, Texas has optimized for cheap power and has not funded the work of reliable power. This is a political decision at the end of the day due to companies not paying for their externalities of poor service. I'm open to saying we shouldn't blame follower-type politicians who were scared of "raising electrical rates" and we should blame ourselves, but let's all acknowledge that some costs that weren't borne should have been borne and some oversight that should have occurred didn't occur. Is that so hard to concede at this early juncture?
If the utility company had a disclaimer on their bills, or a billing option to pay more or less depending on if you wanted to run this type of risk - maybe it would be a tradeoff people could make?
Instead this seems to be a complete failure of the regulated utility and it's governing political apparatus resulting in an entirely preventable 'major hurricane' level crisis.
I don't see why others states can do it and Texas couldn't or shouldn't. This is hindsight, but out past strategy, if it was intentional, was not optimal.
Even just numerically, I would bet money that the lost productivity and sales will be much more than the "ounce of prevention" costs, even ignoring the humanitatian aspects.
They're young and prepared, so they'll be fine. I expect there to be a lot of deaths. And then a wave of burst pipes and property damage. Many people may be going without running water for weeks or months to come.
Is this lowering cost or just shifting cost, given the huge amount of property damage being caused due to lack of power? The “stitch in time” would apply here. Not to mention how to calculate the cost of human suffering caused by trying to survive in freezing temps with no power for multiple days.
Re: everyone starts deciding what they believe to be truth within 48 hours of the outage.
Maybe, hopefully... the epidemic is humbling us. It's been significant and long lasting enough to rub our noses in whatever opinions we so brashly got behind too early. Professors and peasants alike. We're more likely to stop and say "I don't know."
The classic example of this is governments taking credit/blame for economic stuff. Low unemployment, high gdp, etc. Current government decisions are really unlikely to be affecting these, because stuff takes time. Meanwhile, short term data about the economy is both uncertain and fairly useless even if it wasn't. The whole thing is so disingenuous, yet I doubt there has ever been an democratic election where this wasn't a major factor.
I was wearing an n95 mask in the grocery store starting March 1st last year, there was no reason at that point to think it wouldn’t help and I still can’t comprehend why someone like Fauci who said in no uncertain terms not to wear a mask, it won’t help never faced any repercussions. I probably got a lot of things wrong that I don’t really remember. I still am a bit ocd about hand washing and hand sanitizer even though covid seems not to spread via surfaces very much, except for when it does, and I’ll probably keep doing that until the pandemic is over just because I have been.
My takeaway from this past year is certainly not that humans are rational or good at accountability.
I thought the general assumption was they were afraid of dramatically affecting supply for the people who were risking their lives taking care of sick patients.
That set of statements probably cost almost as many (or more) lives as the (very misleading) 'no such thing as asymptomatic spread' comments from WHO.
If you're in a position of authority and you DO come out and say something you know to be false then don't be surprised at having to deal with long running consequences for making such a statement.
You can decide for yourself, but to me he was pretty clearly trying to make people think masks don't work masks don't work while leaving a small sliver of plausible deniability.
This whole article makes a compelling case that he's really just as much of a calculating politician as anyone in Washington https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-case-against-fauci/. And he's done a great job branding himself because most people seem to think the opposite, until you look at him closer.
May I ask what exactly you were hoping for here?
If my bad advice cost thousands of lives, I would at least retire from public life.
The two people with the power to fire Dr Fauci are the NIH director, and the president (via his power over the NIH director). In fact by summer 2020 Dr Fauci had earned the ire of the White House, but for essentially the opposite reason (this was when the White House was still trying to underplay the pandemic as not-that-bad, going-away-soon, it'll be an Easter miracle, etc). As such the NIH director aligned with Dr Fauci against the White house, and Fauci was seen as the "defender of wearing masks" or somesuch. For example, consider the following article:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/16/francis-collins-defends-...
I don't think it's impossible to have seen Fauci fired if that's how Trump played it politically. But it's not.
Consider the following:
> Trump, in particular, has openly disagreed with Fauci’s guidance on whether fans should attend professional football games in the fall [...]
> In recent weeks, as the U.S. outbreak has spiraled out of control, Fauci has urged Americans to wear masks and to practice social distancing. The White House, however, has refused to amplify his advice, and instead has escalated its attacks on him.
The white house was trying to stimulate the economy by reassuring people it's okay to go out and spend money. Attacking Dr. Fauci for not being serious enough about masks sends the opposite signal. Hence, Fauci became the "wear a mask" guy (as viewed in opposition to the White House). Thus, everyone forgot / didn't care that early on he was wrong about masks.
Hope that cleared things up.
Can you imagine telling people to take care of covid positive patients without having any face masks?
We expected more from all health authorities all over. Fauci failed us, the WHO, the CDC. We needed more from all of them.
If you ever have the opportunity to visit Japan and see people wearing masks when they have a cold or flu on normal days. We don't do that. Heck, we are in a work culture where it is a bad thing to take days off when you are ill.
If you look at other countries where the government and the populace take pandemics seriously and lock down.
You see governors here being proud about not adhering to COVID-19 Protocols. You see Police in major cities of the country REFUSING to wear masks or intentionally wearing them wrong. You hear of them refusing to get the vaccine, when they are prioritized to do so.
You see a Pandemic become politicized because an incompetent man was President and it was part of his brand to not deal with it or set an example.
You have certain epidemiologists telling school teachers to get back to work and teach his daughters because, well only a small number of them will die from COVID, so get the fuck back to work.
I could go on, but it is what it is.
This is actually a perfect example of the difficulty of scientific communication to a large audience. You need to communicate concise easy to understand guidance about complex topics. Asking “are masks effective” isn’t a simple question and the answer is, it depends. The first part is “effective at what task”, the second is “to what extent”, third is “in what situation”, fourth is “with what risks and tradeoffs”. I’ll be talking about the non-N95 masks unless specifically stated, to avoid any confusion.
Masks are not very effective at preventing an uninfected person from contracting Covid when in proximity to someone infected with Covid. The masks do not form a seal around the mouth and nose, allowing significant amounts of air around the mask when breathing in, as well as not being able to prevent being infected through the eyes. They do provide some protection, including possibly reducing the severity of the infection if contracted while wearing the mask, but that is not their primary benefit.
Mask are effective at preventing the spread from an infected person (either asymptomatic or symptomatic) to others. Breathing out directly into a mask allows the material to catch and trap the majority of the virus carrying condensation, and what gets out around or through the mask is slowed down significantly, allowing the droplets to be pulled down by gravity before traveling as significant distance (or fog up your glasses). Especially when combined with social distancing, this is very effective at prevent the spread of the virus. This is the masks primary benefit and is effective when there is large scale adoption, so that people that have the virus but are not aware, don’t unknowingly pass it. Its effectiveness comes as an aggregate effect similar to herd immunity, rather than an individual effect, since the vast majority of transmission comes from people unaware they are carriers.
Mask come with risks. People tend to touch their face more while wearing masks, and contracting the virus by touching your face is a primary infection mode. People tend to relax other more effective protection methods when wearing a mask, both unconsciously and due to a false belief in the protective capabilities of a mask.
So, in March we had a situation where we were running a shortage of masks. We had people wearing masks (either homemade or surgical) because they believed the mask provided good protection from contracting the virus, which is not true, and may cause people to engage in risky behavior that would put them and others at more risk. We also didn’t have enough masks to be used for their actual benefit of “herd immunity”. The assessment was that non sick people wearing masks was likely to put the individual at greater risk, and deplete the resource from places it was needed, without providing a medical benefit to the individual greater than the risks. In March, the average non sick person should not be wearing a mask.
Now, we have a situation where we do not have a shortage of masks. We have a situation where the public has been educated through awareness campaigns on how masks work, like the “My mask protects you. Your mask protects me” campaign, so people are less likely to use the masks incorrectly and put themselves and others at greater risk. The assessment is that high compliance of mask wearing will have a greater positive effect through “herd immunity” to outweigh the risks and tradeoffs. But make no mistake, the risks are still there. Now the average non sick person should be wearing a mask.
If you don’t understand the underlying medical complexities of the situation, it seems like they can’t both be true. And when an expert organization is trying to provide a clear, short, easy to understand list of recommendations from analyzing and evaluating all those data, they can’t go into to a 45 min presentation every time. Dr. Fauci even tried to add context in March. He talked about how the masks don’t provide protection in the way people think they do, how it can cause people to put themselves at greater risk, both through a false sense of protection and other behaviors like face touching, and how masks primarily protect you from infecting others, not the other way around. If you go back and look at his quotes at the time, he consistently tries to bring that additional context into it, but since it is a complex issue of competing risks and benefits, it’s hard to convey how masks can be good in some cases and bad in others.
> Dr. Fauci in March. “When we get in a situation where we have enough masks, I believe there will be some very serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks. We're not there yet, but I think we're close to coming to some determination. Because if, in fact, a person who may or may not be infected wants to prevent infecting someone else, one of the best ways to do that is with a mask, so perhaps that's the way to go.” [1]
> And of course his 60 Minutes interview. “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”
[1] https://www.axios.com/anthony-fauci-masks-coronavirus-f77c30...
I'm not predicting any kind of revolution, and this is all at the margin. I don't expect TV takestars or politicians to be the vanguard. That said, I have noticed people pondering the unknowability of it all. More interest in margin or error equivalents. Stuff like that.
Example: Covid conversations (the one I have in mind was with my aunt) 6 months ago were along the lines of "the government did X, Y happened." Now, it's wondering whether X impacted Y... counterfactual thinking.
I have yet to encounter this in my work/corporate life though, and honestly, that's where it's most needed.
It kind of feels like the problems are evident, and waiting for time to lull people back into complacency on the issue seems like it will just set up the next such disaster.
[0] https://twitter.com/MikeZaccardi/status/1362038182234251267?...
It’s tricky - I also have a problem waiting months for a slow inefficient government agency to figure out how to cover their collective asses (or find the right scapegoat). I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make systems we can monitor, analyze and draw conclusions from much quicker.
There needs to be a happy medium- find the problems and “trust the experts” for sure, but do so without being so damn _loud_.
"I also have a problem waiting months for a slow inefficient government agency to figure out how to cover their collective asses"
We don't deal with school shooting massacres here right after they occur. We don't deal with them after they happen.
What stopped school shootings? Not having children in schools.
You just had a group of militias, white supremacists et al, invade a branch of government, terrorize they staff, representatives and security--and nothing comes of it in terms of accountability and responsibility by Trump.
You have those on the political right saying nothing big happened. You have people whining why is the national guard still there?
As a nation, we don't prioritize efficiency, competence and reaction time. We don't want to measure and improve our infrastructure and policies.
Legislators have a terrible habit of using a crisis to:
1) Make something that was already illegal super-dooper illegal (see: terrorism).
2) Mucking up traditional safeguards against bad government - like evidence requirements, reasonable process, human rights in some cases, debating the legislation, reading the bill before voting on it, etc.
In emergencies, legislators are just going to rubber-stamp things technical experts wave under their nose/hand power to some executive. They aren't needed.
I want to thank you personally for injecting a PDF into the discussion, but also positively assert that it is not obvious what just happened this week. We don't yet know how many of the recommendations were ignored, what happened in the last decade regulator-wise or whether this round of failures are for the same or different reasons.
Speculation is much less useful than waiting a few months for the actual investigations. Emergencies are urgent, engineering (and political) decisions and assessments are never emergencies.