> The system monitors phone signals to alert police and local officials if those in home quarantine move away from their address or turn off their phones. Jyan said authorities will contact or visit those who trigger an alert within 15 minutes.
> Officials also call twice a day to ensure people don’t avoid tracking by leaving their phones at home.
I'd hate this so much. I get why they feel it's necessary, I do. But I still absolutely hate this.
I hope stuff like this doesn't get nomralized. Especially in other non-first-world countries
Taiwan has been a well run country for a while, but the 50's were still difficult times for Taiwan. The civil war concluded in '49 and there were a lot of refugees. Based on the opinions of relatives, Taiwan really only hit 1st world status (good sewage, garbage and drinking water) in the 80's.
We also hope the kind of isolation we're currently living under to avoid COVID-19 spreading doesn't become normalized. These two special circumstances could probably remain tied together.
That approach doesn't comport with human psychology. A higher probability of getting caught is far more deterrent than a higher punishment. This is why the parole system needs to be reformed to be "swift, certain, and fair". https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-09-09/-swift...
Generally, in the case of truly existential risk (IE, "everybody in the world will die if we don't do this thing") people accept the idea that authoritarianism (or rather, strong political powers overriding normal privacy concerns) are generally considered acceptable. covid itself is not an existential risk (nobody believes it will kill everybody, or kill enough people to make it impossible for the surivors to live), but the effects of long-term economic shutdown could pose a very serious risk.
What we want to avoid is stupid responses; for example, for all the people complaining that you needed an ID to travel on an airplane domestically in the US after 9/11, the real problems were the increased security theater- unnecessary changes that mainly existed to make people feel confident while travelling.
The really strict lock-downs have only been happening for the last week. People love it because they imagine this is only going to last a few weeks. Tell them that in order to be effective we're going to need to stay shut down for a year or more. Then let's talk about how much people like it.
The plan is to lift the lockdown after a few weeks when the number of new cases is low enough for targeted interventions - thorough contact tracing and quarantining.
Whose plan is that? My gov't has only told the citizens about their plan to shut things down, they haven't elaborated on what happens next. Just today we took the next step and made it a legal requirement that everyone stay at home. In our jurisdiction of just over 4 million people, we have 191 positive tests and 5 deaths. The number of new cases is already tiny, so how much lower do they have to go before we can switch to targeted interventions?
Governments appear to be still working out the details of what to do, but you can look at those countries on the leading edge to see that they do come out of shutdown gradually and have other measures in place that are somewhat effective for COVID-19.
> In our jurisdiction of just over 4 million people, we have 191 positive tests and 5 deaths. The number of new cases is already tiny, so how much lower do they have to go before we can switch to targeted interventions?
Targetted interventions may not be sufficient if you're at the leading each of the wave - the exponentially rising part, or after the inflection point but still rising. In that phase the number of people actually carrying the virus and passing it on is much higher than the number of positive tests, most of them are asymptomatic spreading it (or were before shutdown), and nobody knows who they are. It can be at the start of an exponential growth, even with small numbers, and even if the numbers dropped temporarily.
> so how much lower do they have to go before we can switch to targeted interventions?
It totally depends why they are low, and for how long.
South Korea never shut anything down apart from schools moving online.
Their entire strategy was one of targeted isolation rather than blanket shutdowns.
They've had one of the best results so far. Some of the responses out of the west really comes across as a kneejerk reactions by leaders who don't have the slightest clue what to do.
Last rumour I picked up from the news where I live, in the UK, is that the current plan is:
1. Shut down most of the economy to dampen the enormity of the tidal wave as peak pandemic hits, to reduce the overwhelm in intensive care units, and thereby reduce deaths.
2. After the peak (shape and size altered by 1) has passed and it is decaying, if the shutdown ends abruptly then the pandemic here will start up all over again. So instead, the shutdown will be eased off alongside extensive personal testing and individually self-targeted isolation.
I worry that 2 won't work so well because there are a lot of people who will turn into spreaders: Test negative at home for "had the virus", but in the phase where people who had the virus can get back out, will be happy to get out and pretend they had it already had it, hidden in plain sight among those who have. After all we already saw, here in the UK, that a lot of people are happy to be spreaders on the grounds that "only sick and old people are dying anyway".
Authoritarianism is occasionally useful when collective action is necessary to prevent a major disaster. Individual people have a tendency to take everything they can, like in cases where entire stores have been bought out of meat or toilet paper or cleaning supplies. An authoritarian approach of dictating what a person can and cannot do at a very fine-grained level can prevent these things from happening. For example, rationing is currently very popular as a way to maintain stocks of toilet paper for people who need it.
The key here is that we understand it to be for the common good. Whereas most authoritarianism is to force people to fit the same mold, here it has an application in keeping people from hurting each other by their actions.
The thing is that I suspect that the problem is mostly not (yes, with some widely publicized exceptions) that you have people individually buying hundreds of rolls of toilet paper or dozens of eggs, but LOTS of people figuring that a bit of buffer stock in the house can't hurt because who knows what the future will bring.
I know in my case I did a couple shopping trips before the panic buying started. I bought nothing at all out of the ordinary but I did stock my house up a bit more than average on various things. You multiply that by the majority of people and it's not hard to clear out a store.
My pet theory adds that people were previously eating out a lot, and getting snacks from little shops. Now all of a sudden they are getting everything from supermarkets and cooking more often at home, so even without any hoarding, there's been a surge in the number of people eating home-made food at home.
The flu is no slouch. I’m cherry picking a bit but for the US in 2017-2018:
“CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2017–2018 season was high with an estimated 45 million people getting sick with influenza, 21 million people going to a health care provider, 810,000 hospitalizations, and 61,000 deaths from influenza.”
The panic is at least in part responsible for the present havoc that has been caused to the healthcare system (again in the US). Forecast havoc is all disease.
Interesting side effect of the social distancing is that it has materially reduced influenza numbers as well. Take a look at some of the recent stats at https://healthweather.us. Many states are dropping below average fever counts.
Part of that is having the hospital capacity for seasonal flu and accident victims. We're prepared for that. Coronavirus adding more cases will soon overwhelm hospitals in major US cities, at which point they will have to start triaging patients like they are in Italy.
Presumably if this became the new norm then we would up our hospital capacity to match and then re-adjust our life expectancy numbers as well.
Hospitals often have to set up tents in parking lots to deal with flu cases when the influx is much higher than average. We don't provision for peak flu; we provision for something less than the flu average.
Yes, we do. In the typical flu season, everyone who needs a hospital bed can get one. Flu season happens every year, we have planned and prepared for it. We have not prepared for the load that COVID places on our resources.
I never said it was a "normal flu season". I just said we've sort of factored-in the costs (in our heads) about flu.
I think what folks working in ICUs think about flu is probably more complex than what they are saying right now; most people in ICUs are dealing with clear and present dangers with the technical systems that they have. What matters more is researchers and folks who do aggregate analysis of costs on a countrywide or larger basis, averaged over longer times, and considering second-order effects.
> Officials also call twice a day to ensure people don’t avoid tracking by leaving their phones at home.
I'd hate this so much. I get why they feel it's necessary, I do. But I still absolutely hate this.
I hope stuff like this doesn't get nomralized. Especially in other non-first-world countries