When discussing any data, we must make assumptions about the validity of the data. Sometimes, this is pretty concrete. For example, if you manage a café, you might have counts of how many coffees you sell each day. This can help you answer questions such as how many pounds of coffee beans should be purchased each month?

Stuff gets complicated, however, when people do stuff that people do. For instance, getting free coffee refills. Suddenly, the assumption of "one sold cup of coffee means one cup of (physical) coffee" is broken because some blogger will park their butt in your café and drink three cups of coffee over the course of two hours for the price of one cup of coffee. In terms of how much coffee you must order, this means for some customers, one cup of coffee sold means more than one cup of coffee's supply of coffee beans are required ¹.

In the above example, I use a seemingly simple measure (number of coffees sold) to illustrate that counting stuff and interpreting counts is seriously difficult business, especially if you are not very familiar with the data involved. To be "data-driven" or "fact-based" often means to wholeheartedly assume certain data sets are as people report them to be.

Note that being skeptical of how good some data is does not entail "conspiratorial thinking"—assuming some group of evil-scheming people plotting a power grab or something to that effect. Data collection can be bad because multiple well-intentioned actors follow different procedures. Here we are looking at the opposite of conspiracy in the sense of jointly-coordinated efforts towards some aim—we are looking instead at messy data from different parties failing to coordinate and the aggregation of data from different (relatively independent) sources.

Viral Matters

I think we do have some pretty good info on how viruses operate and spread generally. For instance, an (Internet) friend shared this excellent, accessible article describing how a virus can spread and what sorts of situations are high-risk: "The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them" by Prof. Erin Bromage.

As far as I can tell, the info in this article is solid. The author of the piece above is an expert in these things. Articles like the one above are helpful as "field guides" to understand how to best protect our friends and family from viral threats.

Let's assume we have a decent model of how viruses generally do some stuff.

Authority and Uncertainty

Prof. Bromage (from the above linked article) asserts ²,

Always defer to the guidance from your local Health Department or the CDC!

My uncertainty about the counts of COVID-19 matters leads me in no way to contradict Prof. Bromage on questions of how viruses spread and what we can do to protect one another. However, as an independent individual (in the sense that I'm not a government official making policy on COVID-19, a university professor who is obliged to honor certain institutions), I have reasons to doubt how much the WHO or the CDC or whoever knows about the (biological) reality of COVID-19 situation as it evolves. No need to open the geopolitics can of worms here to make this point... ³

One big class of unknowns, as introduced in this article, is what exactly is being counted and how is it being counted. To me, it seems heterogeneous; we are seeing different ways of counting different things from different places. This is no one individual's fault—but I think it is helpful to appreciate this fact rather than reactively making policies that certainly affect many people's lives drastically.

In my own life, I have chosen to act (very) conservatively, pretty much not going out at all over the past couple months. Should this be ordered as a top down policy? I dunno, should we ban french fries and tell people not to drive motorcycles?! This is a political issue!

Feelings and Politics

Smart people, such as Prof. Broman, seem to assume we have decent enough data on what is going on to make mandates on huge scale. We are seeing a pretty big "civil disturbance" here; it is not "just the flu bro" in terms of institutional/governmental responses.

We are collectively making decisions in using rather opaque data. Policies like YouTube's anti-disinformation campaign against content opposing the World Health Organization's ⁴ statements on COVID-19 make sense from a Chinese-style "social harmony" perspective—we want everybody to be "on the same page" working together. Big organizations everywhere are making similar "get on the (establishment-approved) bandwagon" type policies governing what people are allowed to say, less they be thrown into the "conspiracy theory" loony bin.

Let us not confuse confident/assertive language for understanding! We are living in times with more data readily available than ever, but we have not collectively improved on how to filter or deal with all that data. Statistics is a specialist's art (science? engineering exercise?) and often those most knolwedgable about some model in the world are most blind to see things in other terms ⁵.

Fear

Fear is one way to get people to hop on board with a decision. This is the "if we don't do anything that's the worst" type thinking. Will this lead to the best outcome? Unfortunately, this is often the tool used to steer collective decisions (e.g. voting in democracies).

We can expect exploitation of fear to fuel political agendas (which may be ones we agree with) to continue as long as humans continue to make societies.

In this COVID-19 situation, I think that widespread fear is a particularly big problem because we are seeing lots of expansion/exercise of government power over all sorts of things: where people can('t) go, who gets money, who is "essential", etc.

There is nothing wrong with fear itself; indeed it is a very useful thing to make quick decisions (often without thinking) about stuff like... don't walk over some narrow crumbling bridge to take a selfie or you might die or don't try to pick a fight with some dude who has eight scary-looking friends around him.

Trying to understand the situation

Fear, however, can be counter-productive to understanding. In the above examples, fear may save my life but it also prevents me from understanding what I can do. I could stop and take a picture of that scenic crumbling bridge, using a selfie-stick as a monopod thing to get a better angle. I could observe the scary people from the shadows and learn a bit more about the culture of the area I am in. When faced with unknown situations, fear is a useful thing to feel. As situations evolve/change, however, fear may wear away and we can begin trying to understand things better...

Below are some strategies I have for trying to understand what's going on around me, broadly:

• Respect (primary) data including first-hand accounts of what is going on; aggregate measures are good for some things, but can be very misleading when readily accepted in some pre-packaged narrative
• Seek out and compare alternative choices/decisions; somebody else may have a different take on something—investigate what assumptions they are making to lead them to believe this; don't assume someone is irrational/idiotic because they arrive at different conclusions than you; instead follow their chain of rationalization to find their beliefs (which you may find yourself agreeing with)
• Recognize we are making decisions under uncertainty and realize that more certainty doesn't mean more understanding (think of your favorite "stupid zealot")

The tools I use to do this are many. For example, gossip/smalltalk/banter is a great way to find out about how people are thinking/feeling about stuff generally. You could be a nerd and look at some aggregated poll result (worse). Or, you could just listen to some different people tell you stories and/or complain about stuff (better). This is primary feelings data.

I intentionally stay subscribed to/read media from people very unlike me because I think they may bring up good ideas that I am not intended to find myself. For instance, I lean towards less top-down control and more "muh freedoms" (libertarian) in how I prefer the US to be run. However, I can see in anime how glorious nippon can be a beautiful place with top-down directed castle building and government sponsored giant robots. I personally wouldn't want to go through all those Japanese formalities of bowing and saying this-and-that phrase. But I recognize the aesthetic appeal of this and why Japanese tourism is way more popular than me (at least pre-COVID-19, lol). I am personally a cis-gendered straight male (type o blood, black hair, brown eyes; very common). But I learned myself some basic gender theory and SJW ⁶ talking points because they point out some big social issues of our time. There is no point denying the hurt/pain of people unlike me, even if I don't agree with their political aims for the most part.

Finally, we can remind ourselves of how we can get involved with some idea/cause or another. This is one reason I write stuff here. I can look at what I've said and see a record of how I've said smart/dumb stuff. By writing about how I think about things, I can get insight into stuff I do(n't) see and guard against where I might be led astray. For instance, I know that in the past, I've been a relatively conflict-averse ("agreeable") person, often to my disadvantage.

Declarations of Faith

Returning back to COVID-19 matters...

We are witnessing an interplay of fear and faith with regards to how people are responding to COVID-19. My word salad above explains some ways in which I try to better undersand what's going on, and consequently, how I determine who/what to put my trust in.

As I see it, we are all "people of faith", just different folks put faith in different stuff. In these trying times, we are seeing many sorts of "prophets" rising up, each belonging to different "churches", and some using social media more than others, ha! As this COVID-19 business unfolds, we'll see how the "prophecies" of these different groups unfold. Until it is over, we'll see fear continuing to drive a "witch hunt" against those without unwavering faith in "the establishment", broadly.

Generally, I think that less escalation/application of state power is best because individuals can choose to protect themselves and their families in many ways, to the extent they perceive COVID-19 as a risk. I don't think the evidence/analyses of what is going on are good enough to warrant total, prolonged, widespread mandatory shutdowns of lots of stuff, as we're seeing. Though, I do hope businesses/governments/etc. give people options to stay quarantined/locked-down if they wish to choose this more conservative option...

...in any case, until locked down times end... more blog posts 🙃