Day 18: Monday
My wife went shopping this morning and was able to get most of her list, including oats for my breakfast and cans of tomatoes. There were even a few packages of toilet paper, all of which she left on the shelf for those who may need them.
My morning routine went normally except for oversleeping by half an hour, but it was hard to do a day's work. My legs ached and I occasionally felt sleepy. Perhaps I let myself go soft over the weekend; certainly I spent too long reading Reddit. I felt that my brain needed some online junk food, but could not keep it from over-indulging.
Concerning the county, I spoke too soon: today there are roughly 200 more cases, and 3 more deaths. But the NYT shows more signs of improvement in Spain and Italy; maybe France too, and still too early to tell for the UK. What made more impression on me was this article by John Cochrane, which proposes that restricting all the people and all the things they do is foolish: costly and not very effective, compared with restricting just the super spreaders and the opportunities they get to do damage, or with testing widely. He points out, and it is mathematically true, that even a test with low specificity and/or sensitivity can inform a better quarantine than what we have now. My qualm about his first argument is that, as with a free market in general, people find ways to do what they want in the presence of restrictions: if you close bars but permit parties, someone will buy a few cases of this and that, then throw a grand party. A lot of someones. It may be that the present restrictions are the only enforceable ones that will work, until more tests are available. Singapore is unconvincing as a counter-example, because it has enforcement abilities that few countries (including China) can match, and a single, central, government that is actually competent and quite widely trusted.
Oh, and now that I look for them, I see no shortage of op-eds ripping Bill de Blasio's handling of the emergency into very small pieces. The one I've read all the way through says that he was, years ago, much better at emergencies. Meanwhile, sure enough, there are churches in Florida and Louisiana whose pastors seem happy to spread virus. But what did we expect?
And I'm glad you didn't ask me about India. This is not the first time for Modi to announce a sudden grand plan and see it fail. But it may be worse.
My morning routine went normally except for oversleeping by half an hour, but it was hard to do a day's work. My legs ached and I occasionally felt sleepy. Perhaps I let myself go soft over the weekend; certainly I spent too long reading Reddit. I felt that my brain needed some online junk food, but could not keep it from over-indulging.
Concerning the county, I spoke too soon: today there are roughly 200 more cases, and 3 more deaths. But the NYT shows more signs of improvement in Spain and Italy; maybe France too, and still too early to tell for the UK. What made more impression on me was this article by John Cochrane, which proposes that restricting all the people and all the things they do is foolish: costly and not very effective, compared with restricting just the super spreaders and the opportunities they get to do damage, or with testing widely. He points out, and it is mathematically true, that even a test with low specificity and/or sensitivity can inform a better quarantine than what we have now. My qualm about his first argument is that, as with a free market in general, people find ways to do what they want in the presence of restrictions: if you close bars but permit parties, someone will buy a few cases of this and that, then throw a grand party. A lot of someones. It may be that the present restrictions are the only enforceable ones that will work, until more tests are available. Singapore is unconvincing as a counter-example, because it has enforcement abilities that few countries (including China) can match, and a single, central, government that is actually competent and quite widely trusted.
Oh, and now that I look for them, I see no shortage of op-eds ripping Bill de Blasio's handling of the emergency into very small pieces. The one I've read all the way through says that he was, years ago, much better at emergencies. Meanwhile, sure enough, there are churches in Florida and Louisiana whose pastors seem happy to spread virus. But what did we expect?
And I'm glad you didn't ask me about India. This is not the first time for Modi to announce a sudden grand plan and see it fail. But it may be worse.
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