Sir, I refer to Tim Harford’s “Is it even possible for countries to prepare for a pandemic?” FT June 24, 2023.
“Be prepared! It’s the scout’s motto. But prepared for what?” I was never a boy-scout but as I have understood that movement it was to be prepared courageously for the unexpected, not silently accepting a lockdown; and to be able to lit a fire without matches, not to learn to deploy sewage monitors.
So sadly, though Harford does indeed know much of economy, here I think he does not even scratch the surface of what’s most needed, like:
First: The understanding that, for a nation/society as a whole, a response to the pandemic can be much more harmful than the pandemic itself.
Second: That just as George Clemenceau opined, “War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men”, a pandemic is also too serious a matter to entrust to epidemiologists” Any preparedness against a pandemic must include a wide diversity of opinions.
Third: Information, information and information: With respect to this Harford mentions: “Joshua Gans, economist and author of The Pandemic Information Solution (2021), argues that we’ve learnt that pandemics can be thought of as information and incentive problems.” No, begin by giving the people full information and then let them understand and decide if and what incentives are needed.
In July 2020 I tweeted:
“Sweden kept all schools until 9thgrade open. Parents of children in 9th grade are almost always less than 50 years of age. In Sweden, as of July 24, out of 5,687 Coronavirus deaths 71, 1.2%, were younger than 50 years.”
“Conclusion: Keep schools open, keep older teachers at home and have grandparents refrain from hugging their grandchildren. Disseminating data on Covid-19 without discriminating by age, is in essence misinformation.”
Clearly information on the relation between Covid-19 and age was available but was not sufficiently provided. One explanation could be that the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world in the midst of a polarization pandemic. 17 October 2020 I wrote in a letter to FT “way too many polarization profiteers just don’t want harmony vaccines to appear.”
March 2020 I tweeted:
“In February, I visited Churchill War Rooms in London Reading UK’s plans of building up herd immunity against coronavirus, I have a feeling Winston would have agreed with such stiff upper lip policy: “I have nothing to offer but fever, coughing, chills and shortness of breath”
Sir, Neville Chamberlain’s spirit inspired UK’s pandemic answer. Just like he is present in the risk weighted bank capital requirements which incentivize much more the refinancing of the “safer” present than the financing of the “riskier future”
I summarized the result of the above three failings in a letter published by the Washington Post in October 2020 in which I stated: "Roughly 90% of all coronavirus deaths will occur in those 60 years of age and older. Equally roughly 90% of the virus’s social and economic consequences will be paid by those younger than 60. It’s an intergenerational conflict of monstrous proportions."
PS. Sir, if you are interested you might want to read what ChatGPT – OpenAI answered when I asked "Suppose a virus hits a nation, and to its authorities its evident that its mortality rate depends the most on age. In such a case, transmitting data to the population about the total number of deaths without discriminating this by age, could that be deemed to be misinformation?"
PS. Sir, you should be interested in the above, it evidences how humans can begin dialoguing with artificial intelligence, so as to have a better chance of keeping their Human Masters and appointed experts in check.
@PerKurowski