The Rationality community was never particularly focused on medicine or epidemiology. And yet, we basically got everything about COVID-19 right and did so months ahead of the majority of government officials, journalists, and supposed experts.
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We started discussing the virus and raising the alarm in private back in January. By late February, as American health officials were almost unanimously downplaying the threat, we wrote posts on taking the disease seriously, buying masks, and preparing for quarantine.
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The rationalists pwned COVID
This isn’t true. We did see it coming more clearly than most of the governmental authorities and certainly were ahead of public risk communication, but we were on average fairly similar or even a bit behind the actual domain experts.
This article summarizesinterviews with epidemiologists on when they first realized COVID-19 was going to be a huge catastrophe and how they reacted. The dates range from January 15th with the majority in mid-late February. See also this tweet from late February, from a modeller working of the UK’s SAGE, confirming he thinks uncontrolled spread is taking place.
I have an email dated 27 Feb 2020 replying to a colleague: “My thoughts on Covid-19 - pandemic is very likely.” It was such a dry, intellectual statement, and I remember feeling incredulous that I could write those words with such ease and certainty while feeling total uncertainty and fear about how this could play out.
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Two moments stand out for me. One was in the first week of February, when I saw early signals that there could be substantial transmission before people show symptoms. Despite hopes of rapid containment, it was clear contact tracing alone would struggle to contain outbreaks
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On January 23, I was at an NIH meeting related to potential pandemic pathogen research. Everyone had heard the news [that Wuhan had been locked down] and was beginning to discuss whether this would be a big deal. Over the next several weeks the concern turned more grave.
I believe February 27th was the same day as ‘Seeing the Smoke’, when it became accepted wisdom around here that coronavirus would be a huge catastrophe. Feb 27th was a day before I said I thought this would be a test-run for existential risk. And late January, we were in the same position as the NIH of ‘beginning to discuss whether this would be a big deal’without certainty. The crucial difference was understanding the asymmetric risk—A failure, but not of prediction.
So why didn’t the domain experts do anything if so? I’ve been reading the book Rage by Bob Woodward which includes interviews with Fauci and other US officials from January and February. There was a constant emphasis on how demanding strict measures early would be ‘useless’ and achieve nothing from as early as the end of December!
I’m growing to think that a lot of health experts had an implicit understanding that the systems around them in the west were not equipped to carry out their best plans of action. In other words, they saw the smoke under the door, decided that if they yelled ‘fire’ before it had filled up the room nobody would believe them and then decided to wait a bit before yelling ‘fire’. But since we weren’t trying to produce government policy, we weren’t subject to the same limitations.
I’m growing to think that a lot of health experts had an implicit understanding that the systems around them in the west were not equipped to carry out their best plans of action. In other words, they saw the smoke under the door, decided that if they yelled ‘fire’ before it had filled up the room nobody would believe them and then decided to wait a bit before yelling ‘fire’.
I believe you that the experts rationalize their behavior like so. The problem is that underselling a growing emergency was a terrible advocacy plan. Maybe it covered their asses, but it screwed over their stakeholders by giving us less time to prepare.
Their argument really proves too much. For example, the Wuhan provincial government could also use it to justify the disastrous coverup.
Yes, really smart domain experts were smarter and earlier but, as you said, they mostly kept it to themselves. Indeed, the first rationalists picked up COVID worry from private or unpublicized communication with domain experts, did the math and sanity checks, and started spreading the word. We did well on COVID not by outsmarting domain experts, but by coordinating publicly on what domain experts (especially any with government affiliations) kept private.
This isn’t true. We did see it coming more clearly than most of the governmental authorities and certainly were ahead of public risk communication, but we were on average fairly similar or even a bit behind the actual domain experts.
This article summarizesinterviews with epidemiologists on when they first realized COVID-19 was going to be a huge catastrophe and how they reacted. The dates range from January 15th with the majority in mid-late February. See also this tweet from late February, from a modeller working of the UK’s SAGE, confirming he thinks uncontrolled spread is taking place.
I believe February 27th was the same day as ‘Seeing the Smoke’, when it became accepted wisdom around here that coronavirus would be a huge catastrophe. Feb 27th was a day before I said I thought this would be a test-run for existential risk. And late January, we were in the same position as the NIH of ‘beginning to discuss whether this would be a big deal’ without certainty. The crucial difference was understanding the asymmetric risk—A failure, but not of prediction.
So why didn’t the domain experts do anything if so? I’ve been reading the book Rage by Bob Woodward which includes interviews with Fauci and other US officials from January and February. There was a constant emphasis on how demanding strict measures early would be ‘useless’ and achieve nothing from as early as the end of December!
I’m growing to think that a lot of health experts had an implicit understanding that the systems around them in the west were not equipped to carry out their best plans of action. In other words, they saw the smoke under the door, decided that if they yelled ‘fire’ before it had filled up the room nobody would believe them and then decided to wait a bit before yelling ‘fire’. But since we weren’t trying to produce government policy, we weren’t subject to the same limitations.
Thanks for this well researched comment.
I believe you that the experts rationalize their behavior like so. The problem is that underselling a growing emergency was a terrible advocacy plan. Maybe it covered their asses, but it screwed over their stakeholders by giving us less time to prepare.
Their argument really proves too much. For example, the Wuhan provincial government could also use it to justify the disastrous coverup.
Yes, really smart domain experts were smarter and earlier but, as you said, they mostly kept it to themselves. Indeed, the first rationalists picked up COVID worry from private or unpublicized communication with domain experts, did the math and sanity checks, and started spreading the word. We did well on COVID not by outsmarting domain experts, but by coordinating publicly on what domain experts (especially any with government affiliations) kept private.