This week: whether the UK government got COVID-19 wrong, why Bernie Sanders failed, and reasons to be cheerful in a dark time. SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS Has the UK government screwed up its response? The Imperial College report published earlier this week led some to conclude that the government's strategy to date had been mistaken. Well, maybe. But note that the Imperial scientists are aware of the limitations of their own analysis: "We do not consider the ethical or economic implications...here, except to note that there is no easy policy decision to be made. Suppression, while successful to date in China and South Korea, carries with it enormous social and economic costs which may themselves have significant impact on health and well-being in the short and longer term." All that got lost in the reporting, of course. The first thing to say is that it's too early to draw firm conclusions about the best way to handle this virus. We don't know how many peaks there will be, in which countries, or how high, over the year to come. We won't know for months or even years who was right and wrong or what that means. The second thing is that, unlike epidemiologists, who model the spread of disease, the government has to take into account a whole other level of complexity - economic and social effects, which also devastate lives. The horrible problem for decision-makers is that
Oh, oh, and there's no map
Oh, oh, and there's no map
Oh, oh, and there's no map
This week: whether the UK government got COVID-19 wrong, why Bernie Sanders failed, and reasons to be cheerful in a dark time. SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS Has the UK government screwed up its response? The Imperial College report published earlier this week led some to conclude that the government's strategy to date had been mistaken. Well, maybe. But note that the Imperial scientists are aware of the limitations of their own analysis: "We do not consider the ethical or economic implications...here, except to note that there is no easy policy decision to be made. Suppression, while successful to date in China and South Korea, carries with it enormous social and economic costs which may themselves have significant impact on health and well-being in the short and longer term." All that got lost in the reporting, of course. The first thing to say is that it's too early to draw firm conclusions about the best way to handle this virus. We don't know how many peaks there will be, in which countries, or how high, over the year to come. We won't know for months or even years who was right and wrong or what that means. The second thing is that, unlike epidemiologists, who model the spread of disease, the government has to take into account a whole other level of complexity - economic and social effects, which also devastate lives. The horrible problem for decision-makers is that