Quote from: strawbs on March 15, 2020, 03:16:22 PM

Quote from: OutOfMemory on March 15, 2020, 03:01:50 PM

I think i know what you mean by arguing against myself.
But i am not really. There is just a very basic problem to decision making.
Most decisions are based on:
1. trying to achieve something
2. trying to avoid something
Very basic, as i said.
When you try to achieve something through actions, you have to closely watch that you don't support developments which finally result in what you tried to avoid. These are many things, most of the time. Good example to this: Trump. He puts actions to achieve MAGA goals, but almost all of them backfire. Why? Because his principles follow method no.1 without respecting method no.2.
That's where economists end epidemiologists would come in handy. The latter can project the spread, while the former are able to evaluate the unwanted outcomes.
Populism goes in the other direction. Assume some more damage.
There is only one thing that is worse than making a decision: Delaying actions and ignoring developments by not making decisions. This is what Italy, Europe and the US did until a week ago. Waiting out. Which will show its fatal consequences soon. The UK is a week or two behind. Optimism did not do anything to solve a problem, ever.

I mostly agree with you, except that UK isn't guilty of not making a decision. It has made a definite decision not to impose enforced isolation now, in the hope of avoiding an unmanageable peak further down the line. I'm not saying it's the right decision. But it might be. Nor is UK a week or two behind, they've chosen a different strategy. Of course that may change, and probably will, more due to political pressure and the need to be seen to be doing something, whether it's effective or not. The media love to jump on alleged inaction.

They way our media presents it, the UK minister of health is waiting out, refusing to cancel events with a lot of people.
By a week behind, i was thinking in numbers/covid-charts compared to Italy over time.
So it seems i fell victim of the media. My wishing well a few posts before was honest, no irony there, btw.