I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing.
1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected
2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted out
3) pandemic, no action -> government was "wrong", caused loss of lives and damaged the economy -> voted out
4) pandemic, action - this is the trickiest scenario, so let's consider two options:
4a) pandemic, action, it works -> government was "right", saved lives, spared the economy -> reelected
4b) pandemic, action, doesn't work -> government was "wrong", their actions failed, they're incompetent -> voted out
There's two winning scenarios, (1) and (4a), but the problem is that (4a) has vanishingly small probability of success... with little information available about the virus, and rampant globalization, it's hard to know what action makes sense, is correct and viable... Case in point is Italy, which did act in time (they banned flights from China 2 weeks before the outbreak), but still failed (i.e. their action was "correct" but not "correct enough") because their neighboring countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act.
So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario.
> So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario.
I'm from Belgium myself, so I can chime in.
Our minister of health is a docter herself, and is advised by a panel of experts including a professor of virology. They know very well what they are doing with the current 400 known infections.
Closing schools makes no sense currently because of following factors:
- kids are not the main factor in spreading the virus, as seen in other countries.
- Putting kids with their grandparents is probaly worse for death toll compared to keeping them in schools.
Closing schools makes senses in democratic nations for two reasons.
First, it puts societal pressure on businesses to close or modify their operations by allowing people to work from home. Many families are simply not setup to have kids at home, but parents at work, so factoring that in will cause businesses to change.
Most importantly, all this happens without government directly intervening in business decisions.
Secondly, it lays the groundwork for politicians to take more drastic actions. If schools remain open, even if it makes sense by “the numbers”, it’s still going to be politically difficult to cancel events, restrict general travel, and eventually close businesses. The public sees school closures as step 1 in any disaster situation. You can’t discount the importance of emotional signaling.
Maybe, but this is not linear growth. It's still exponential, albeit not as steep as ours (Slovenia), but you are still on course to double number of cases every 5 days.
Linear growth would have a declining rate for daily percentage change (adding 10 cases when you have 100 is 10% change, adding 10 when you have 400 is 2.5%).
What have Belgium and Denmark done differently, up to ~10 March?
I don't see much (if any) difference in their responses, so there must be some other factor for Denmark -- e.g. increased travel to Italy, more tourism from China, poorer personal hygiene, ... I don't really know, but
Your comment is fine except for that attack. Please don't stoop to that here, regardless of how strongly emotions are running. It helps no one and only makes this place worse.
First, there's no "no pandemic" case. Not anymore.
Second, your conclusion says that "politicians choose (1)" but that is not the case at all - almost every country in Europe, Asia, middle east had taken measures, with varying severity, and significant economic cost.
Last but not least, the whole framing is extremely simplistic and follows the "politicians are evil" reddit-like logic.
> First, there's no "no pandemic" case. Not anymore.
I am not saying that the analysis is correct, but information that is disclosed now has no bearing on an explanation of the actions of actors in the past.
> Last but not least, the whole framing is extremely simplistic and follows the "politicians are evil" reddit-like logic.
Politicians are people who happen to really care about being reelected. If you have any contact with them, you will realize that this is the ulterior motive of all of their actions. In a sense, as it should be. Being our democratic-elected representatives, it seems reasonable to me that they behave as slaves to the preferences of those who elected them. Like everything else, this creates a bunch of perverse incentives. You would have to be very naive to overlook these things, and imagine that powerful politicians will no put reelection above all things. The ones that didn't did not get reelected, and are not powerful politicians.
The original post probably uses pandemic in the colloquial sense, not by the WHOs definition which seems widely disagreed on. Remember the last WHO pandemic was the swine flu, which turned out to be more mild than the seasonal flu.
I would say it follows a "politicians act in their own best interest" logic. People with jobs in other industries have similar behavior, but I suppose the politicians have greater impact on society, so most people rally around the cynical view of politicians.
Besides, it's a lose/lose proposition for the gov anyway.
If they do act, people will blame them for the cost of the action.
If they don't, people will blame then for the cost of not acting.
Nobody will pat them on the back, except a few intellectuals, for acting.
In fact, economically, the virus spreading is an opportunity to fire people you couldn't fire before, get rid of an old population costing money and have an excuse for a lot of things like passing certain types of law. People will not focus on that, their attention is elsewhere, and you can always invoke the circumstances if they do.
We have created a system in which it's not in the interest of the gov to solve the problem. And in which the population lives in a way that makes it hard to do the right thing by themselves.
More accurately, I think, we have let very cynical people take control of everything important. So in matters of policy it's reasonable to assume extreme cynicism.
The natural human instinct is to look to leadership during a crisis. This is why Bush’s competency in the eyes of the public was harmed after Katrina. This is why McCain’s “maverick” rep harmed him against “steady” Obama during the financial crisis.
If the coronavirus starts impacting the lives of Americans in a widespread manner (shuddered schools, closed offices, loss of jobs), the same instinct will kick in.
Given what the current POTUS has gotten away with, as with many others in power everywhere, I don't have much faith in the accountability we can expect.
The economy is going to be in shock, whatever you do.
Don't act, and you'll get a messup economy because of the panic and the sick people.
Act, and you'll get a messup economy because of the panic and the sick people, and the cost of tests+quarantines+curfew. Less people dead is the ethic thing to do, but power is not about morality.
This comment is a perfect example why we won't have the same containment as Japan or South Korea; we in the west, "know" that our government is evil/incompetent/selfish so even if they act, we will not heed their advice.
It's not like they don't have the same incentives in the other countries, the main difference is that we do not trust the government. Might be selection bias, but I do think we have been hammered with a stereotype on modern culture about the incompetent/evil bureaucrat getting in the way of the hero's solution.
At the risk of being down-voted, I'm not trying to start a political debate. I'd just like to know, as someone outside the USA, how this is affecting the election campaigns there.
Are personal costs of the pandemic encouraging people to support subsidised healthcare, and therefore a left-wing party?
Or is the xenophobic rhetoric of "blame China/Europe/travellers/etc" causing people to support a right-wing party?
I also haven't seen a full discussion of the chain of cause and effect. There was a shift from the primary sector to tertiary services, which led to urbanisation to find demand for services. Young people living in cities can make more friends than before, and this is good! It also means that there are more people living in close quarters, who can spread disease more effectively. I'm willing to face the risks of urban life instead of subsistence farming, but I wonder if other generations resent that.
I see a lot of what you mention on online mediums.
But it's usually quite different than what's really happening IRL.
People love to play the panic game online, but I've seen only quiet order around me.
Yesterday, my entire neighborhood has been evacuated because of a bomb, we were all grouped in an hospital, where we were questioned about possible fever.
In airports, I see people wearing masks, facing cancelled flights. I see stores with huge queues to buy stock of food.
It all happens in a calm and civil manner.
Maybe I'm optimistic, but I'm nicely surprised by the way people act right now, despite all the blame we want to place.
The long term impact on U.S. politics is hard to gauge. As a member of the Democratic party, I am in favor of emergency legislation that provides direct financial payments to impacted individuals. In particular, we have close to 30 million uninsured and they have a strong disincentive to get tested for Conrna virus due to unexpected/unknown costs.
This is likely the same segment of the population who have a strong incentive to go to work ignoring risks of community spread. They live pay check to pay check and can't afford to be sick and take time off.
As an emergency measure, the federal government should carry all costs associated with virus testing. Any individual who is quarantined or must stay home to care for those quarantined should receive direct cash transfers to off-set the immediate economic dislocations this causes.
The current federal administration's argument for suspending payroll taxes does nothing for those who are unemployed or work in the informal, cash economy.
Luckily, at the state and local level officials appear more competent placing the health related impacts above politics. As an example, the governor of New York took the unprecedented step of quarantining New Rochelle just outside New York city.
If there is any possibility of a silver lining from all of this, it would be how the U.S. electorate might see the true economic cost of allowing roughly 10% of the population to be uninsured. To me, it is immoral that the richest nation on earth permits those who are most vulnerable not having equal access to adequate healthcare.
Finally, as an indication of how the federal government continues to politicize the pandemic, the Secretary of State continues to call the Covid-19 pandemic, Wuhan virus, as an insult to China.
As a US citizen lucky enough to not be significantly impacted by all of this, I'm deeply embarrassed by such an outrageous insult from a federal official.
I don't know the answer to your question, but in addition to the mechanisms you mention there's at least one more: there's some evidence that fear in general, and fear of death in particular, tends to make people more supportive of right-wing authoritarian government.
(I don't mean to imply that right-wing = authoritarian; I pair them together because my recollection is that the research in question was specifically about right-wing authoritarianism and not about rightism generally or authoritarianism generally.)
So (1) to whatever extent the GOP is authoritarian as well as right-wing, or at least pushes the same psychological buttons that authoritarian rightists do, it might benefit from having a population that feels afraid, and (2) maybe Mr Trump would have done better politically with something along the lines of "This is a deadly epidemic, sweeping in from scary foreign countries, and only your strong President can protect you and keep you safe". I guess the restriction on air travel from Europe may be intended as a bit of a pivot in that direction.
I doubt it will affect elections directly. Looking around the world, there's mostly bad examples from all kinds of governments - right-wing (Trump in US, Johnson in the UK), centrist (Macron in France, Merkel in Germany), left-wing (Slovenia - was centre-left until a week ago, Denmark), totalitarian (Iran, China)...
Most people do not see any personal cost of healthcare and thus are not turning more left-wing. The left-wing party is pushing that view, but they are not changing anybodies mind.
There’s not much right vs left yet. It’s just the Democrats figuring out who their candidate will be. The pandemic has a very small effect on the US right now. Things are closing but mostly in anticipation of the near future. Almost none of it is in the middle where the right lives.
There’s been some yelling at trump over his poor handling but it’s mostly just virtue signaling at this point. When the elections come around for real we will probably see something of this if/when it has evolved into something more serious here.
I say this in Boston, just a few degrees of separation from some of the COVID confirmed individuals.
> (i.e. their action was "correct" but not "correct enough") because their neighboring countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act.
The Italian cluster most likely stems from an initial infection in Germany which occurred 10 days before the first flight bans anywhere. Italy probably failed, because it reduced testing to only include symptomatic cases at a critical time ( https://www.adnkronos.com/fatti/cronaca/2020/02/27/coronavir... ), not because Germany did not disallow flights at a time where it was already community spreading in Europe.
> 4a) pandemic, action, it works -> government was "right", saved lives, spared the economy -> reelected
This is too optimistic. If it works then people see a tiny death rate and a shutdown forced by the government. The greatest success will look like an overreaction.
Yeah I'm not so sure. In Poland the actions are on the "extreme" side so far, and not many people complain, because sights and news from Italy are constantly brought up as comparison. It's constantly "unless we want to be as screwed as Italy is, we need to do X" and not many people complain about X.
Same in Lithuania. Closing schools, clubs, gyms, canceling all public events and gatherings. So far we have only three confirmed cases (all came back from Italy), but the public is mostly supportive("finally!"). And that is even our health minister is at the bottom of the popularity rankings and the current goverment is not loved at all.
Yes, this is y2k/ozone hole syndrome. Arguably financial crisis, too; that would have been a lot worse without the quite extreme government intervention round the world, but it generally didn’t work out well for the politicians involved.
That said, a lot of governments are taking serious measures and apparently not counting the electoral cost.
Yes, unless your govt is hyper-nationalist and labels the pandemic as a "foreign virus". (Of course dirty foreigners are going to get sick—They're dirty.) We have no fear of pandemics here. We're superior. God protects us. Except for our non-conforming neighbors. They're rat-infested slums, so of course they will get the foreign virus too. God will protect us in our region though because we're clean and white, and we support the hyper-nationalist worldview of Dear Leader.
So it's a complicated problem, with many dynamics at play.
But all their experts have been telling them that (1) cannot happen, for quite some time.
Another explanation is that government don't realize how much their words and actions have an effect on people's behavior, or they only focus on the worst possible effects ("what if people don't understand or react badly?"). In which case, they downplay the danger only to delay their decision. Because they're afraid of themselves (and can't have trust in the population).
> But all their experts have been telling them that (1) cannot happen, for quite some time.
No, the experts are subject to the same game-theoretic play... e.g. WHO declared it a pandemic only yesterday. The only ones who suggested the correct action (ban all flights from China already during Chinese New Year) are the ones with no skin in the game / no decision-making power / no relevance, who are therefore not subject to the game.
The idea of dividing the outcome up into two binary "it works" and "it doesn't work" is a logical fallacy. It's like the ridiculous anti-gun control arguments that say because a measure doesn't stop 100% of gun deaths, it's not worth doing at all.
That's now how game theory works, the pandemic is not another player who is 2nd guessing the government or vice versa.
Instead governments are weighing the probabilities (think a probability tree, according to your scenarios) you kind of point to this in your conclusion.
The point of Game Theory is to analyze the situation according to the actual payoff function for each player, not according to the socially (Pareto) optimal outcome.
The 2 players here are the government, and the voters. The socially optimal scenario is action REGARDLESS of whether it's a pandemic or not (in a hyper-globalized world it would hurt a bit, but only the first time, after that the tourists, supply chains, etc. would adapt) but the voters penalize that outcome (they see action with no pandemic as overreaction not as successful prevention) so governments avoid it.
The question here is which actions of what severity, not simple act or not.
There are many ways to handle this, from maximum quarantine and cancellation of medical appointments, through closing mass gatherings (e.g. schools), rationing, enforced testing, closing public transportation, controlling private transportation, closing airports, sea and river ports, mandatory sampling for tests etc.
Each choice comes with a value for disruption and voter groups it will affect, and value for monetary cost.
Game theory is not too helpful here, as disruption does not directly affect discontent and definitely not your chances of getting elected. These are much more complex decisions with many more actions between here and then.
It still isn't game theory, the government acts first, the voters act after after observing the outcome. There is no subsequent game.
It is simply up to the government to estimate probability and expected payoff. Optimal action for government is to take the least amount of action to prevent the voters from thinking its a pandemic. It isn't a game theory scenario, there are no nash equilibria.
Does Japan include the cruise ship? Don't forget, Germany is a major transit country in Europe, everybody traveling back from Italy to the North crossed through. Italy, and the Alps im general, are in the skiing season. So a lot of tourism going on. Plus, 200 to 1,600 in 8 days isn't nearly as bad as you make it sound.
Just that the majority if governments in Europe are taking steps, pretty radical ones at that. For no other pandemic, SARS, MERS, various flus or Ebola was anything even near to what's done now.
I wouldn't like to be the one to meet the decision, so. Because the cost of closing down a country for a couple of weeks is enormous. So when do put these actions in place? I have no idea, but it seems to be pretty difficult to get the timing right.
There is no point in crying wolf over these actions online, or even worse about what should have been done in hindsight. There are whole staffs doing nothing else right now, experts in their respective fields. So the best we, as a public, can do right now is to get out of these people's way. We follow guidelines like washing hands and reducing contact. We go self quarantine. We take steps we can in our social and professional environment. We send our employees into WFH or close certain cites if that's not possible. We work with authorities to come up with plans and contingencies if our companies are relevant in that regard.
But banning direct flights from Italy was definitely not the right action especially since the tourists were just rerouted through other European airports. All the epidimiologists are saying that closing borders doesn't help since the beginning
But there is obviously a pandemic. I mean the WHO just called it a pandemic. How is 1) even an option? Do they just pretend it doesn't exist? Do they hope it doesn't kill too many people? People wont buy it, that's for sure.
> Italy, which did act in time, but still failed because their neighboring countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act
This is incorrect. Italy closed borders on Jan 31st. The Chinese visitor to the Webasto company meeting came to Germany on Jan 19th.
It is easily evident that Germany closing its borders at the same time as Italy would not have prevented this transmission. You should probably increase your skepticism about the media where you read this.
This may be true if politicians are selfishly focused on reelection, and it’s one of the core reasons western democracies have term limits.
In times of crisis our system needs leaders who do the right thing over the popular thing, even when it means risking losing office. This is called statesmanship.
Voters would do well to remember this when choosing leaders, it’s an increasingly rare quality we select for.
The president may have term limit but the party might want to continue to be in control of the senate and congress (or the equivalent in other countries)
After Y2K I tried to raise this point that all the work did pay off. I guess people were expecting a control case somewhere, like a random power station in the middle of nowhere crashing, to show what happens if a system remained unpatched. After a while, I started to doubt myself as well. Even going to "Y2k was a hoax", for a brief period. But talking to more programmers from that period snapped me out of it.
Even supposing politicians all act 100% selfishly, they'd still want to do everything possible to mitigate the effects of the pandemic: for themselves and their own families, even if for nobody else.
So, they want to hole up, then let the pandemic burn to completion as quickly as possible, so they can then emerge. They want everyone else to be exposed so they are no longer dangerous (either dead or immune).
This analysis could just as well be applied to "war on terror" -- The response to which was opposite, and a lot of people profited by it (careers, contracts, etc). What makes them different?
Wait, been I've been told "you can't just shut down travel", and that closing borders doesn't work, for reasons that are completely self-evident. So I'm utterly mystified that there are virtually no cases and 0 deaths in countries like Russia and Mongolia that closed their borders.
I think we should not attribute to malice what we can explain by not being able to get your sht together. Belgium did't have a government for a very long time because they couldn't get the sht together. I think they are just overwhelmed and scared.
Not attributing it to malice is white-washing, after Steven Miller or somebody equally racist ordered an immigration judge Christopher Santoro to issue an order to take down all Spanish Coronavirus prevention posters from immigration courts. In their way of thinking, the more immigrants who get the virus, the more Trump can say "I told you so" about his border wall. It's biological warfare, in support of a lie.
That and giving smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans was 100% genocidal malice, not a lack of having their shit together. The problem is that they DO have their shit together, and it's racist xenophobic mendacious destructive shit.
The Trump DOJ’s Crazy Back-and-Forth on Coronavirus Prevention Posters
1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected
2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted out
3) pandemic, no action -> government was "wrong", caused loss of lives and damaged the economy -> voted out
4) pandemic, action - this is the trickiest scenario, so let's consider two options:
4a) pandemic, action, it works -> government was "right", saved lives, spared the economy -> reelected
4b) pandemic, action, doesn't work -> government was "wrong", their actions failed, they're incompetent -> voted out
There's two winning scenarios, (1) and (4a), but the problem is that (4a) has vanishingly small probability of success... with little information available about the virus, and rampant globalization, it's hard to know what action makes sense, is correct and viable... Case in point is Italy, which did act in time (they banned flights from China 2 weeks before the outbreak), but still failed (i.e. their action was "correct" but not "correct enough") because their neighboring countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act.
So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario.