Ah, data and humans
We are currently grappling with four different front burner crises here on Planet Earth, blue among the Stars: COVID-19, climate change, grotesque social and economic inequality, and catastrophic political polarization. The article referenced above describes our COVID situation using well-presented data. To interpret this data, the author operates from the assumption that humans could just control this problem if only we would. What controls are needed and the means to achieve this control are presented.
I offer some different assumptions and interpretations with respect to the COVID-19 problem below.
My Assumptions
When analyzing data, realize everyone, scientists and non-scientists, must start with basic assumptions. These are the baseline against which we will interpret the data as we grapple with any given problem and as we try to solve said problem.
Assumption number one is that human minds are deficient in terms of the ability to perceive and make sense of temporal (time) and spatial (location) information. Said another way, we have poor temporal and spatial (location) resolution with respect to information at the individual and group levels. Current data scientists are using time series data and procedures to try to interpret information over time by location.
Assumption number two is that human minds are configured to survive and reproduce within the Earth’s environment, not the societal creches that have walled us off from Earth environment for as long as we have records. Our survival and reproduction in Earth’s environment, and critically in our diverse social environments, did not require a knowledge of anything outside our immediate and very restricted locality circumstances for each individual, and thereby the groups we have lived in.
Assumption number three is that outcomes achieved by groups are dependent on and in feedback loops between individuals and their respective group inhabitants.
Interpretations
We are currently grappling with a rapidly spreading disease whose origin lies in our destruction of the ecological system we are adapted to survive and reproduce in. The article above suggests we need to wall our various groups off in toto from other groups to stop the disease from spreading. That only works if you can absolutely control humans. If you realize that this disease will spread any chance it gets because that is its means by which it survives and reproduces within the Earth’s environment, and you note that humans cannot be absolutely controlled as this dataset shows, you might not be so sanguine about the controls suggested above. This is the case for all diseases. They are organisms that have evolved to survive and reproduce here on Earth, blue among the Stars.
I posit walling off groups to deal with the spread of COVID is futile and is a reflection of short-term temporal and spatial thinking when evolution acts over millions upon millions of years within the context of all living and non-living things on the Earth. Again, the article above also posits humans have absolute control over themselves and other humans, a type of control that our history eloquently demonstrates we do not have.
To see the outcomes of these assumptions in action do read about what happened to Native American peoples when Europeans unwittingly transmitted Europe’s many virulent diseases into their midst. Those diseases won this continent for the European invaders in ways their superior weapons could not have achieved alone because the isolated Native populations had no immunity to the new diseases. The same will happen when isolated communities are penetrated by COVID carriers, as the data cited in the article above demonstrate.
I am not a Trump fan, but in this case, he is right. This disease situation will play itself out and people are going to die and be disabled by it. Given human mind deficiencies with respect to the ability to perceive and act on temporal and spatial information not right in our faces, we will not (as individuals and their associated groups) be able to respond reasonably as a whole group to stop this disease’s advance, and indeed, it won’t work to try by the means suggested because we don’t have that kind of self- and group-control in the face of organisms that are evolved to jump among us as their means of survival and reproduction.
Solutions
Ride this storm out.
Keep as many of us alive and functional as possible.
Accept the temporal and spatial resolution deficiencies of our own minds and the tools built from such (I am looking at you, AI).
Be like surfers, not rigid control freaks.
Accept Nature and the Universe do NOT NEED US. We need them.