The good news is we might have overreacted with COVAD-19 but its good that most countries took the precautionary principle approach since we have zero understanding of complexity (in this case -immunological dark matter).
The bad news is most people still don't have the humility to accept complexity and use the months of shutdown as "I told you so" and/or as some political bull shit. The crying wolf story would come true when major pandemic unleashes on us in the future since we haven't learned to eliminate the root causes (factory farms, eating meat, wildlife poaching, etc.) but we will spend trillions on the cure (and of course new recipes for hand sanitizers).
As they say, I am so surprised that we (humans) made it so far. Amen.
Here's Karl Friston clarifying his dark matter analogy to idiots who don't humility (and once again Bayesian approach wins).
In the coming months, one simple catchphrase would emerge as a slogan, and people will remember only that. As far as understanding and accepting the complexity of things around us - there are always a million more years to come.
The bad news is most people still don't have the humility to accept complexity and use the months of shutdown as "I told you so" and/or as some political bull shit. The crying wolf story would come true when major pandemic unleashes on us in the future since we haven't learned to eliminate the root causes (factory farms, eating meat, wildlife poaching, etc.) but we will spend trillions on the cure (and of course new recipes for hand sanitizers).
As they say, I am so surprised that we (humans) made it so far. Amen.
Here's Karl Friston clarifying his dark matter analogy to idiots who don't humility (and once again Bayesian approach wins).
‘Dark matter’ was used to convey the notion that — in epidemiological models — there exist certain causes of epidemiological and sociodemographic data that may not be easily observed, and may therefore need to be inferred. In short, there are latent (a.k.a., hidden) causes that cannot be seen that are necessary to explain what can be seen. The particular dark matter referred to above comprises a subset of the population that participate in the epidemic in a way that renders them less susceptible to infection — or less likely to transmit the virus. Entertaining this kind of dark matter represents a departure from basic infectious disease epidemiological approaches that assume 100% population susceptibility. Technically, the evidence for this dark matter is overwhelming; in the sense that the evidence (a.k.a., marginal likelihood) of models with this subpopulation is much greater than the evidence of equivalent models without it. This raises some key questions:
What is the nature of this subpopulation? This question is important because including a non-susceptible proportion in epidemiological models determines the (asymmetrical) course of the outbreak, particularly its tail. In turn, this becomes important in terms of ‘unlocking’ policies and the potential for rebounds. Furthermore, it interacts with the putative mechanisms for a second wave that, under the models in question, inherit from a loss of population immunity. Finally, the prevalence of a non-susceptible population has quantitative implications for the efficacy and selectivity of testing and tracking.The key speculation here is up to 80% not even susceptible to Covid-19. But the lesson one should learn here is not some miracle happened but the stuff about complexity is lockdown might be one of the factors which reduced the susceptibility. And of course, not many people are going to think and reflect on that.
In the coming months, one simple catchphrase would emerge as a slogan, and people will remember only that. As far as understanding and accepting the complexity of things around us - there are always a million more years to come.
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