This article about the alarming new COVID outbreak now under way MN ends with the vexing observation that @GovTimWalz is still in the process of ••lifting•• NPIs — large sports & entertainment venues reopening Thursday, work from home lifted the 15th.https://m.startribune.com/minnesota-covid-19-hospitalizations-back-above-400/600040666/ …
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It’s not hard to imagine how lack of predefined thresholds makes it easy to stay open too long, then stay closed too long. When a governing body or expert panel has to make the decision, there is always a bias against change. Rocking the boat is hard.
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If otoh everyone sees the closure coming weeks in advance as cases rise — or can anticipate a reopening as cases fall — it’s easier for officials just to say, “Well, that’s the plan and we’re sticking to it!” And I imagine it’s easier for people to accept change they anticipate.
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Yes, there are big advantages to situational, nuanced expert consensus. Political pressure easily overwhelms those advantages. Witness now health officials sounds alarm bells — there’s your actual expert consensus! — as the politically constrained Governor muddles onward anyway.
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Better to come up with specific, quantified, predefined default settings — “predefined” is key! — then require nuanced expert consensus to deviate from those defaults. This doesn’t just apply to pandemics. I’d like to see spending and tax rates linked in a similar way.
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My heuristic here is: “Create policy so that the passive choice is as likely as possible to be a good choice.”
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An incisive observation: fear of change → larger response lag → larger swings → worse outcomeshttps://twitter.com/ZoeMcLaren/status/1377646071707541512 …
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End of conversation
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Perhaps even more broadly, government officials prefer these half-hearted efforts because they're scared of being wrong and held accountable.
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I tend to think that most government officials (hardly all, but far more than the people imagine) truly want to do what’s best. Hearts are mostly in the right place. But hearts are up against a lot of pressure, and…
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