Ok. For the most part I have been focused on the symptoms and medical aspects of this...especially since someone in my family recently had a medical emergency requiring surgery. Now I have turned my attention to the bigger picture trying to understand what is going on. I have not connected all the dots yet. I am enlisting your support - we have a diverse community here from all walks of life and experience/dispositions. Some of this will have a polictical dimension which I believe is unavoidable, but which I think is critical to full undertanding or future examination. I will be unemotional in my declaratives. If anyone disagrees, I will either ackowledge the mistake on my part, respectfully and unemotionally respond or simply let the community decide - hopefully in a dispassionate manner as well. I realize this is skirting at the edge of how Boone et al have defined this site's business rules but believe this is important enough to risk. This initial post will establish context, some knowns and unknowns. Given the medium it won't be published with the organizaiton of a doctoral thesis! I am also posting because today is the first time I have been somewhat angered by how the analysis, information sharing and self-interest has been playing out across all sectors. I want to get at the truth, have good decisions made and get on with life. I don't want any of you impacted by this disease and trust that you have enough confidence in me to not see this as a polemic. It obviously will have a point-of-view as it evolves, but I will be circumspect and disciplined. The ideas will be broken into separate messages as I tire or need to think through the next pieces.
A. Context
1. Theory/Science.
a. The backdrop, not really addressed in the popular media/news we consume each day, is network theory coupled to social theory.
- network theory: This goes back hundreds of years. Forgive me if following over-simplifies. We're all likely familiar with network graphs: nodes and links. These provide the morphology, if you will, for how communication/information sharing is stochastically seen to happen whether the medium is routers/fiber or word of mouth. There is math and analysis (science) behind this. It is, for example, the emprical observation that lies behind the 6 degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon game.
- social theory: grossly reducing a complex issue here (and one I disagree with some prevailing theory). The idea is that as social creatures we exhibit the tendancy, over time, to aggregate our information sharing with folks who share common attributes. The "science" has a broad set of variables it considers viable candiidates for attributes, so you quickly run into problems data scientists confront when building what are called unsupervised classification models. The warning here is to be very careful on how the conclusions from these models are promulgated - the statistics are easy to manipulate. I digress, but it's important to keep in mind in the present environment.
b. Relevance. Pandemic models are built on this backdrop. There are other factors, but I'm keeping to the basics here. Behind all the stuff we are obseving in released information is modeling of the spread of this disease. The following can be surmised from what has been publicly made available:
- the disease is not completely understood yet in terms of its lifecycle for many reasons:
. not enough data and untrustworthy/unauthoritative data
. insufficient testing (and, I would add in since I have not seen much on this: unknown false positive/false negative rates for tests),
. insufficient availability of tests
. initial uncertainties on how the disease propagates
. uncertainties on the longevity of the disease vis transmission mechanisms (e.g., sitting as a droplet on a surface)
. uncertainties about susceptibility to reinfection
. uncertainties about impacted demographics (e.g., younger folks not at risk but evidence of youth contracting and dieing from the disease)
. poor leadership decisions (e.g. Italy)
. influence of emigration patterns (e.g., Northern Italy); i.e., links in the graph
- Assumption: these pandemic diseases exhibit some similar properties, but nevertheless differ sufficiently enough that each inevitably requires data (i.e., patient cases) and analsyis to be understood
- Conclusion: the obvious conclusion is that immediate solutions should never have been expected; there is a timeline for this framed by the disease itself, statistically significant number of documented cases and time to confirm/disprove hypothesis tests (for mechanisms and cures). What we haven't been told by politicians, scientists and media "intellectuals" is what that timeline is expected to be. Hence, the conversation always deflects to palliatives (e.g., social distance, flattening the curve, etc.).; in short, influencing the shape of the network graph assumed to define propagation (e.g., breaking links) and the social attributes that influence social groupings (i.e., the nodes, who groups in nodes, and the influence these social groupings have on the shape of the temporal properties of the graph - new/deleted links).
- Conclusion/Belief: If one thinks about it, you can see how easily this can be routed in directions that are not principally scientific.
- Theme: It's subtle....I believe that to some degree, the Corona-virus messaging has been biased by all of the messengers. Some for ideological reasons, some for raw power reasons (i.e., China), some out of conditioning (face it, our society has been balkanized into camps for many reasons over many decades), some for containment reasons, some out of ignorance, some out of shere malicious intent. More on this later. One then has to decide who to believe - that wasn't always the case. There was a time when wearing the label of a professional had cachet and implicit trust. This has been a major problem for all of us from day one of this disease. A whole set of discussions flows out of this belief; perhaps for another time.
- Theme: we must be patient, however vexing. We must undertand that we are at the stage of understanding the disease and implementing barriers intended to arrest propagation based on the underlying logic of network graphs and social theory. We must understand the strengths, weaknesses and risks of this approach. I think it's the correct approach. But, like some guy said at one time in a different venue: "Trust but verify". Be vigilant in running things down to ground truth whether it's the President, a Presidential candidate, Faucci (see his love letter to HRC that hit the airwaves this morning), a CNN/Fox talking head wagging a finger at us or one of the million and a half media doctors.
B. Root Cause(s)
1. Fact. There have been other diseases that have started in China over the last decade. The evidence is easy to find on-line.
2. Fact. Covid-19 started in China.
a. Uncertainty: we don't know whether this had its inception in a P4 Lab in Wuhan or dangerous practices related to what is being eaten. This discussion in itself leads down many lanes that are crtitical to examine, but, for the moment, I do not want to distract from primary themes. It, however, must be returned to at some point. If this is indeed a recurring pattern, it is an obvious responsbility to ask why and how come nothing has been done to ameliorate (to use mild language) the causes.
More to come.....I'm tired at present...and it will also give Boone a chance to PM me or banish me! Don't change the channel! Hang in there shipmates....we will get through this disease. Each in a different way, but I can tell from your posts that all are headed in a positive direction. Please share your thoughts and add in pieces I am missing. I have a structure, but as noted, am tired at the moment.
 }})
