An interesting blog on risk management and the Coronavirus.
Rather than overcomment I let him speak for himself , while I go off and take some risks
It goes totally counter to Rupert of Extinction rebellion https://medium.com/@rupertjread/what-would-a-precautionary-approach-to-the-coronavirus-look-like-155626f7c2bd Who seems to want to shut down so many things. But he is just anti-risk
Last year I wrote the only way to solve the present precautionary policy disaster is to “wait until the bodies start piling up”. With locusts ravaging East Africa and a coronavirus plague shutting down Western economies, maybe it is time to go back and see how the precautionary principle has fared as the (only) risk management tool in our policy toolkit. With a population naively assuming they were living risk-free lives having been reassured how their personal safety was managed by others, the coming crisis is going to hit hard.
Whatever happened to personal risk management, accountability and autonomy? Populations that have lost an understanding of risks are now incapable of dealing with simple hazard reduction measures. COVID-19 has taught us that two decades of precautionist-driven risk aversion has left an untrusting public without the capacity to protect themselves. Times of mass panic as we’re seeing today are not ideal…
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“Rather than promoting the immunity benefits of fitness and well-being, organisers in Tokyo, Rome and Paris have cancelled this year’s marathon races. Couldn’t these cities use the opportunity to stress fitness and healthy living as a good prevention to diseases.”
To me, that sounds daft. Events that draw people in large numbers from all over the world will, inevitably, increase the rate of spread of the virus, however well people wash their hands. And delaying the spread of the virus, even if that does not reduce the number of people who eventually become infected, is well worth doing, since such viruses seem to do less harm in summer than in winter, and since we can hope for a virus within 18 months or so. So whether to cancel an event is a risk-benefit assessment. And at this stage extreme caution seems rational, since we do not know the infectiveness of the virus, and what evidence we have regarding its deadliness, while far from conclusive, is very far from reassuring.
So cancelling gatherings versus telling people to improve their hygiene Is a false dichotomy. One might as well set up a dichotomy between legally requiring people to wear seat belts, and advising them to drive safely.
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This,from Lenski, is relevant: https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2020/03/08/more-words-of-wisdom/
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