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Comment by s9w | Hacker News Reader

But both sides are irrationally being confident. The doomsdayers at least as much as the "flu-bros". I think it's fair to challenge the massive interventions being taken and the economic damage.

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> But both sides are irrationally being confident.

Being "doomsdayer" does not necessarily mean confidence in the situation. It's more about accepting that overreacting is much more desirable than underreacting when facing something exponential where you're constantly 2 weeks behind knowing what the reality is

> accepting that overreacting is much more desirable

I wish that were true but it is not. It is entirely possible to take actions that make a bad situation worse. The consequences of an economic shutdown, for example, are unknown. The worst case of global depression and supply chain disruption is just as bad as the virus itself, if not more so. I do not know how one makes good decisions in a situation of highly uncertain knowledge and severe consequences.

I think we are in "less bad" territory, i.e. how do we balance multiple considerations such that while not leading to any outcome that could be considered "good", is at least not catastrophic. I don't envy those who have to make such decisions.

When you're in a situation where the severity of the outcome doubles every 4 days and you do not have clear information about where the curve will break, underreacting will result in extremely bad outcomes much much much more often than overreacting

For a simplified example just compare the cost of taking actions that make you break the curve 4 days too early with the situation where you break the curve 4 days too late

> When you're in a situation where the severity of the outcome doubles every 4 days and you do not have clear information about where the curve will break, underreacting will result in extremely bad outcomes much much much more often than overreacting

> For a simplified example just compare the cost of taking actions that make you break the curve 4 days too early with the situation where you break the curve 4 days too late

But does it seem that implausible that cooler heads might find a solution that doesn't cost at least $20 trillion?

It seems obvious that the US could have handled it so much better and cheaper if they had not kept ignoring the situation in China and then Italy (which made Europe wake up)

But even in the situation the US is now, doing something, anything, now. Might still be a lot better than the alternative

That would be ignoring the extent of the economic/societal damage that is caused by the disease itself, would there not be any intervention to try to control the spread and its consequences on the medical infrastructure as well as all the other ones.

The problem with this kind of situation is that, unless you take action when it feels too early, all you will have at the end are your tears and saying "it was too late".

Yes, we also need to get used to dealing with uncertainty in assessments, predictions, computer models. Media are far too prone to blowing unlikely extreme possibilities out of proportion, when we need to see the whole range of possible outcomes clearly.

The problem with much of the challenges to the massive interventions is that they might not have been necessary if countries like the US had a competent and urgent response when the crisis first emerged. But they didn’t, and you can’t go back in time, so the choices are lockdown or let masses on masses of people dies and overwhelm several vital services.

I think the issue is that Faucci, Imperial College in the UK, are (as they should) optimising for a single function - to minimise deaths. However, if we followed this approach for road traffic, no car would be allowed to travel further than 10 miles per hour.

Someone needs to take an economic look at the Corona minimisation strategies. We do this already for other policy areas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life). Does the economic impact divided by the Value of Life look in line with other areas?

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