U.S. Politicians Still Do Not Understand the Coronavirus Time Lag
If state governors don’t learn what a time lag is between cases and hospitalizations and deaths, we are in trouble
It turns out that understanding basic math is important to fighting the virus. Short-term memory doesn’t hurt either.
I hate to sound like one of those “elite intellectual” types, but if state governors don’t learn to understand (or remember from two months ago, but whatever) what a time lag is between cases and hospitalizations and deaths, we will keep repeating second grade over and over.
Recent news — massive growth of cases, increased hospitalizations — is not the result of today’s action. It is a result is actions in May.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the spike in cases has “nothing, nothing” to do with the reopening. (I think his explanation was “goblins” or “magic fairies.”) But definitely not him. He and others fail to understand time.
Vice President Pence, forced out of his “I know nothing” slumber on Friday, was forced to have a media session on the “task force.” He came out, took a bow, and praised how well things were going. Also not much for telling time.
He insisted that deaths were still not increasing. Again I can’t stress enough the concept of a time lag is a difficult one. You know those 20% of people immune to Covid-19 in New York? They are all the untested people who were infected in March.
Those later became older people and then hospitalizations. But the stop-testing-take-away-health-care-its-all-rosy administration is taking the lying and praying approach to the pandemic. Unfortunately they’re also aiding and abetting.
Did Pence once say, “Be careful?” Did he say, “Wear a mask?” Did he mourn the losses? Did he warn how contagious this is? Did he ask America to pull together? Did he tell us to brace for tough times? No. He said “America. It’s not as bad as you think.” He’s talking about May.
Pence performs for only one audience. And no taxpayers, it turns out.
He was pushed out for one reason and one reason only. The stock market. And he spent some time trying to talk the stock market up. I think it worked about as well as praying away “evil” thoughts.
A word about the stock market. The stock market doesn’t care about you. It cares about your productivity. Trump views the stock market as his hope for reelection. Unless your last name is Trump, he doesn’t care about you either. (And he doesn’t care about you, Don Junior.)
He’s happy to have you not wear a mask, gather in crowds, risk your life. But in the Oval, everyone wears a mask but one person.
Because Trump, Pence, and many governors can’t tell time very well, they didn’t put out surveillance tools. They didn’t believe it when people told them cases were growing. They didn’t believe it when hospitals started to fill. They waited until they were tipping over.
Remember when “alarmist” Andrew Cuomo warned they needed to act or their hospitals would be overrun? That’s because you’re supposed to pull the alarm when you smell smoke, not wait until you see fire. Unless you’re Trump, Pence, or one of the three not-so-wise men.
In the middle of May when a number of us put together our Open Safely guidelines, I asked many people to endorse them. And many did.
One prominent Republican, however, who was advising a number of governors, refused. He told me the Republican governors had had enough of the public health. They were opening the economy. And it was unrealistic to ask them to Open Safely.
“You’re tone deaf Andy,” he emailed. Maybe. I was asking that they have tools in place to contain the virus and commit to pulling back before hospitals were 70% full. Now no contact tracing is possible in Arizona. You see time. Give yourself time.
This week I received a call from a familiar voice. “Andy, what do you suggest they do?” “Simple arithmetic.” I wanted to a say that, but see I’m not a smart-ass. I actually couldn’t find any coherent words worth saying.
Gov. Doug Ducey, you will now be dealing with this likely through the end of the summer at a minimum. You are not New York at peak given your density. But that leads to the next “math-y” point. Exponential growth.
There’s more to learn besides addition, cause and effect, short-term memory, science, and humility. Although that is a lot to learn. There’s also the concept of exponential math. Things will get worse, much much worse, for every day you don’t change course.
The lag between opening, people testing boundaries, feeling symptoms, deciding to get a test, and getting a result is weeks. Hospitalizations a couple weeks later. If you don’t understand how two becomes four becomes 16 become 256 then and you’re a governor, stop what you’re doing.
Texas didn’t need to start building field hospitals. But now they do. Florida and Texas are now closing bars and building hospitals. We are certainly not unique in getting hurt by the virus. But we are unique in not understanding the lesson after it unfolded.
If you live in a state outside of the hot zones, don’t let your governor get puzzled by the fact that things aren’t getting better worse yet. Or if in a hot zone, that they close the bars but the numbers keep going up. But if they play dumb you shouldn’t have to.
Now we know why we studied these complicated subjects in grade school. They do apply to real life. While Trump was in the hall picking on kids who didn’t have nice watches and Pence and Ducey were cheering him on, something important was going on.
Others were learning how to be basically numerate. Not to mention at least a little bit kind.
This is pulled from my June 27 Twitter thread.
