FtttG
User ID: 1175
Fallacy of ad hoc post hoc justification
As mentioned in the first item, the Covid hawks’ basic model of how a lockdown works assumes a simple linear relationship between how restrictive the lockdown is (and the degree of public compliance) and the rate of cases/hospitalisations/deaths. When a lockdown is implemented, followed by a spike in cases and deaths, the standard response is to blame overly permissive restrictions or poor public compliance. Conversely, if a lockdown is relaxed and there is no spike, this will be attributed to an exceptionally cautious public: an “unofficial” lockdown.
But sooner or later, these simplistic explanations for the failure of the model to describe reality begin to strain credibility, and Covid hawks are forced to introduce additional epicycles into their model. When faced with incontrovertible evidence that cases failed to spike even in the absence of exceptional voluntary compliance, Covid hawks will begrudgingly acknowledge assorted secular factors which likely contributed to the rate of transmission: “lots of people in Sweden live alone”, “Florida is close to the equator”, “there’s a seasonal component to transmission” etc.
The reason this is fallacious is not that these secular factors didn’t contribute to the spread of the virus and rates of hospitalisation and deaths - of course they did. It’s fallacious because these secular factors are only ever considered post hoc, after the limitations of lockdowns and other restrictions have been empirically exposed. Covid hawks never consider in advance of enacting or supporting a lockdown whether or not the lockdown passes a cost-benefit analysis, after taking these secular factors into account. Surely it would be trivial to find or estimate some key metrics about a particular region (the season, presence or absence of land borders, the percentage of adults who live alone, the rate of obesity etc.), estimate the expected “return” of the proposed restrictions, and input all of these variables into a formula which would indicate whether the proposed restrictions will pass a cost-benefit analysis. Many Western governments were already producing models which forecast cases and deaths conditional on the predicted rate of public compliance; what am I proposing seems like a logical extension of the foregoing.
But aggressive Covid hawks are reluctant to acknowledge secular factors which impact upon the rate of Covid transmission, and not just because these other factors complicate their simple, easy to grasp model of the world. Whether or not to enact a lockdown is supposed to be an easy and straightforward question: when you enact a lockdown, cases and deaths go down; when you don’t, they go up. Once you have acknowledged the fact that factors other than the lockdown itself might affect the rate of Covid transmission and serious illness, you’re only a step away from recognising that these other factors might dwarf or even negate the benefits of the lockdown itself. This in turn implies the uncomfortable possibility that locking down might sometimes be a bad thing on net: that you might throw thousands of people out of work or disrupt cancer screenings for weeks at a time for no reason, breaking a dozen eggs with no omelette to show for it.
To avoid confronting this discomfiting conclusion, lockdown proponents are incentivised to downplay the impact of secular factors, or deny them altogether. You will still, to this day*, encounter Australians and New Zealanders who will proudly declare that it was their lockdown measures (and their lockdown measures alone) which got Covid under control within their borders; and who will become very defensive when you suggest that their success with managing Covid might have something to do with the fact that both nations are geographically isolated islands without land borders.
"Lots of people in Sweden live alone" was an ad hoc justification I saw a lot during Covid to explain how the country were able to maintain a low rate of Covid transmission without ever officially locking down. And indeed, this is true. For reference, Sweden's Covid case count and death count per capita currently stands at 269,511 and 2,682, respectively.
After Sweden, the country with second-highest percentage of people living alone is Lithuania, which locked down and nonetheless saw 525,154 Covid cases, and 3,718 Covid deaths per capita. So much for that as a causal explanation.
The picture's not much better when looking at population density in Europe. Directly above Sweden is Latvia, which locked down and whose Covid case and death counts per capita were roughly the same as Lithuania. Next is Estonia (which admittedly did have a slightly lower Covid death count per capita than Sweden), Lithuania, then Montenegro (472,238; 4,532), Belarus (dramatically lower than Sweden on both metrics), then Bulgaria (195,753 cases per capita; 5,661 deaths per capita - literally second-highest in the world after Peru).
This is not to argue that lockdowns exacerbate Covid metrics: it's merely to argue, as @The_Nybbler did above, that a simplistic model of "impose lockdowns in any given country -> Covid cases go down -> Covid deaths go down" is extremely lacking in predictive power, and the effect of lockdowns will likely be completely dwarfed or negated by local factors (percentage of population who are obese, average population age etc.). In other words: if you were to show you a list of anonymised countries' Covid cases per capita, Covid deaths per capita and case fatality rates and told you that some of them had locked down and some hadn't: I think you'd find it extremely difficult to identify which was which.
As soon as you say "lockdowns do work in general, but happened not to work in location X because of [ad hoc factor]", consider how easy it was for me to disprove the "Sweden didn't need to lock down because of population density/people living alone" ad hoc hypothesis.
*I published this article over a year ago, but this statement is literally true: earlier today I got into an argument with a guy who argued that of course lockdowns work - look at Australia and New Zealand! His argument, as I understand it, was that lockdowns work when used in concert with strict border controls, but don't work otherwise. Which struck me as an extremely roundabout way of saying "strict border controls are an effective way of stopping the spread of Covid; lockdowns unnecessary".
FtttG
21hr ago
The other week I mentioned a brewing controversy surrounding the hip-hop band Kneecap, being investigated for supporting proscribed terrorist organisations (namely by yelling "Up Hamas!" or leading audiences in chants of "Ooh! Ah! Hezbollah!") during live performances.
One of the band's members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (who goes by the stage name "Mo Chara" meaning "my friend") has now been formally charged with supporting a terrorist organisation by the Metropolitan Police, namely for waving a Hezbollah flag during a live performance last year.
FtttG
1d ago
Certainly Sweden's excess death toll was lower than the European average, which seems like the most damning statistic for the efficacy of lockdowns.
FtttG
1d ago
Civil war era US had a tenth of present day US population. Scott surely knows this.
He changed that paragraph from "deadliest" to "highest fatality" when several people in the comments pointed out that the civil war was still more lethal per capita.
FtttG
2d ago
122k words on my NaNoWriMo project. Finally, it feels like the end of my first draft is in sight. Although the projected length has steadily increased over the past few months, I now feel reasonably confident it will be no longer than 140k words. I would love to be finished before the end of May.
FtttG
2d ago
I remember once reading that LBJ bragged that he got more tail by accident than Kennedy ever did on purpose.
FtttG
2d ago
In recent years Carter, Dubya, Obama, Biden all appeared to be above suspicion with their wives
"Creepy Joe" himself?
FtttG
3d ago
Yes, and the /r/Ireland subreddit has unambiguously undergone a purity spiral in recent years.
Wait, I thought "the right" are supposed to be all Nazis? So all the Nazis are voting for Israel now, against Austria, where literally Hitler was born?
In the 2020s, the "far-right" are people who think it's bad to massacre Jews for the crime of being Jewish, and who think Jews are entitled to defend themselves against attempts to massacre them. Whereas the "anti-racist left" are the people making excuses for people who want to massacre Jews, insisting that the reasons they want to do so are perfectly legitimate and not at all related to blind ethnic hatred, suggesting that it's the Jews' own fault if people want to murder them, and saying that the Jews are in the wrong if they attempt to defend themselves against attempts to murder them.
I have no idea how we ended up in this place, but I hate it.
On a more serious note, a disappointment of a decade, tbh, how quickly and easily Ireland turned anti-Semitic (let's not be coy, that's what it is).
A year ago I would have disagreed with you, but at this point I'm struggling to think of alternative explanations which could explain this degree of ire. Conspiratorial ranting about how Mossad are buying up Irish SIMs en masse in order to manipulate Eurovision voting for hasbara purposes - I mean, come on. Don't tell me this has anything to do with "anti-colonialism".
FtttG
3d ago
Before seeing Germany and Latvia, Estonia was my personal favourite. Good clean silly fun.
FtttG
3d ago
He originally published it as a web serial novel. I was keen to read it, but I don't like reading on screens; however, someone helpfully compiled it into a print-on-demand version, which I bought and read a few years ago. Scott later made it available via Amazon himself, and I think this edition (the edition you're reading) has been edited per the description he outlined here (don't click this link if you want to avoid spoilers). I've bought a paperback copy of this edition and it's on my to-read list for this year. I'm curious to see how it differs from the print-on-demand edition I read years ago.
FtttG
3d ago
FtttG
3d ago
More controversially, your reasoning would imply that the following are off the table:
- Every former British colony griping about British colonialism (including the Great Famine of Ireland, the partition of India and Pakistan, and on and on)
- Jews griping about the Holocaust
- Black Americans demanding reparations for slavery, or even bringing up Jim Crow
- Aboriginal Australians griping about the Stolen Generations
- First Nations people griping about residential schools
- Native Americans griping about the Trail of Tears
Interestingly, the Rwandan genocide and South African apartheid are still within the statute of limitations.
FtttG
3d ago
Yeah, admittedly Turkey and Azerbaijan are edge cases as far as geography goes. Culturally, on the other hand...
FtttG
3d ago
Yeah, I remember it so vividly. I even remember sending my brother a screenshot being like "look at this dorky edgelord".
I seem to recall reading somewhere that Nicholas Roske, the guy who attempted to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh, also had some anti-natalist leanings, but I can't find a source for it after a cursory Google.
Edit: @DoctorMonarch tracked it down, thanks a lot!
I used to often commute to work by cycling, and I scrupulously observed all relevant traffic regulations. When I came to a red light, I would stop and wait for it, but my fellow cyclists would often ignore it. There are few more satisfying feelings in the world than waiting for the red light to turn green, then overtaking a cyclist who ignored the red light. The thought going through my mind is "look at me - I'm so much better than you at this that, unlike you, I don't even need to break the rules".
I get the same feeling when I hear someone bragging about how they've lied on their CV in order to make it look more impressive - and I realise that I make more money than them.
You're absolutely right. I noted in another comment that, during the period, Sweden had fewer excess deaths per capita than the EU average.
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