Conversation

SBF
@SBF_FTX
1) There've been a lot of short-sighted strategies to fight COVID-19. Many have been talked about a lot. But I think there's always been a fundamental, unanswered question even for the most heralded approaches.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
2) People generally regard Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and (later on) South Korea as examples of success. And so far they have in fact done a great job of minimizing cases while not having to shut down.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
3) But it's hard to keep COVID-19 from spreading unless the whole world is suppressing it. HK/Taiwain/Singapore/etc. are seeing this now--after initially controlling it, new visitors brought new cases. They've seen a spike in recent cases, almost all from immigration.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
5) But you can only do that for so long. And for those regions in particular, travel is a really important part of the economy. Shutting off immigration for a few weeks and locking down is one thing. But as soon as you lift the bans, you risk re-re-introducting COVID-19.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
6) In some sense it sucks and isn't fair--they've done a great job by most standards, but because the rest of the world doesn't have their shit together, they'll keep getting infected over and over again.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
7) But it's also probably the reality, and begs the question: what's the end game here?
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
8) If the end game is that the world successfully kills off COVID-19 in the next few weeks, then great. But if instead the endgame is something like like a drawn-out, year-long dance that's halfway between suppression and flattening the curve, they're in a tough position.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
9) Can Hong Kong really make it a year without allowing anyone in from the outside world? What are the costs of that?
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
10) Lots of people take some strategy, mark it out to a few months, and say it's great, but secretly the strategy is just shifting all of the downsides to the back end of 2020--and if you marked to the end it would look terrible.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
11) Any real strategy here has to look not just at the short-term results but also the long-term. How many people will get COVID-19 in the next few years? How many will die? What will the cost be to the country of the response over the lifespan of COVID-19?
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
12) Some proposed strategies are REALLY bad. A good tip off of that is if they involve COVID-19 being "seasonal", recurring every winter, and causing the world to shut down every year forever; or if they partially but not fully eliminate COVID-19 but don't look long term.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
13) In fact, almost _all_ strategies look bad long term. Which is just a way of saying: COVID-19 sucks. Our goal is to choose the least bad option, accepting that it'll still be bad.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
14) And whatever strategy we go with should have to answer for _all_ of its costs: life, societal, health, economic, freedom, jobs, etc. And it should have to answer for the whole life-cycle of its costs, not just its short-term ones and punting down the road.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
15) One last thing I'll say: I'm a bit disappointed by how quick people are to censor each other here. Whatever we do, we have to do with our eyes wide open.
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