Over the weekend, compounding the epidemic of SARS-CoV-2, there was an outbreak of DKE-19. It even struck the New York Times, and I had to deal with a case of it on Twitter.
DKE-19 results in long and convoluted justifications of letting more people get sick and die so that (maybe) the markets will perk up.
It’s the argument that the British government was making last week until they suddenly turned around completely.
There was an article on Medium that was taken down, to continue a zombie existence on ZeroHedge, that reliable purveyor of Russian propaganda.* Tom Friedman and an op-ed writer at the New York Times took up the cause. There has been some of it elsewhere. I think it was the Friedman article that an IRL acquaintaince of mine caught it from and was badgering me on Twitter about, although he didn’t dare refer to it or its ideas directly. Just looking for more information, like an internet troll.
In case your loved ones have fallen prey to the DKE-19 plague, here is an antidote in a long thread:
Here’s the takedown of the Friedman article:
The basic argument is fairly dressed up and convoluted. You may look at Tom Friedman’s article for an example. (No, I won’t link!) It comes down to “Let’s let a lot more people get sick and die and get this over with fast.” There are a lot of assumptions in that, and more in the idea that this will improve business and the markets. Here’s one of the less coherent versions.
One of the big assumptions is that the author himself will not succumb to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Unfortunately, early messaging that taking measures not to spread the virus fed into this assumption by implying that young people were less susceptible to it. This is probably true in a statistical sense, but young people still contract the virus and die from it. Cases are starting to show up in some of those young people who were on the Florida beaches. Anyone can get it.
Another big assumption is that, if given the chance, people will flock back to work and businesses that have closed will happily open. Many of the shutdowns were decided by the businesses themselves, and good luck persuading lots of people to start flying again. Nobody wants to get this virus.
Put more simply,
A compendium of experts from Jeff Jarvis.
There is one scenario in which something like this wish-fulfillment fantasy could take place: If there were enough testing, both for the virus itself (nucleic acid testing) and for immunity to it (serological testing). Then we could isolate the sick and allow the immune to start rebuilding the economy. But the FUBAR-in-Chief saw to it that testing would be delayed and diminished in the United States. We haven’t recovered from that yet. In any case, serological tests are just now being developed and brought to market in South Korea.
After the worst is over, the results will be cherrypicked, even by people I now agree with, to show that they were right. There will be plenty of data, and many arguments will be persuasive. My argument will be that we will never know for sure if we did too much, but if that is what we are worrying about, it wasn’t too much.
_____________________
* DKE-19 is probably not Russian propaganda, but its spread serves Russian objectives, making it attractive to ZeroHedge.
germy
MattF
Time to fire Friedman. With prejudice and for cause.
khead
Please grant me the strength to not choke the folks on my Book of Faces who blame the Democrats for the Senate bill not passing.
dmsilev
@MattF: Shouldn’t we wait six months first, just to be sure?
Amir Khalid
These guys don’t seem to grok that lives > money. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was modelling his policy after the mayor in Jaws, who kept the beaches open because Amity was heavily dependent on summer tourists — and who turned out to be very wrong, because the shark kept right on eating beachgoers. BoJo is too stupid to read/watch Jaws to the end.
Nora
@khead: Those stupid people have the New York Times (not to mention the New York Post) backing them up, presenting this as the Democrats standing in the way of help to the suffering millions.
schrodingers_cat
What does DKE stand for? Ok got it Dunning Krueger effect.
Amir Khalid
Per the article at the link, Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Immanentize
@khead: Just get the hell off of Facebook. It is not improving your life, nor will it ever.
MomSense
@Nora:
And this is why we can’t have nice things. The media are constantly framing their “reporting” so that it benefits Republicans.
The New York Times is especially awful. All the people who defended the NYT because of its international reporting or because they still do some very good work, blah blah blah were wrong. This publication has been broken for a very long time.
The New York Times is garbage.
Splitting Image
One thing I only just realized is that Trump’s delayed handling of this crisis has been baked into the pie since he got elected.
It’s always been the case with him that he’s ignored the experts surrounding him in favour of watching the talking heads on Fox News. Usually the problem with this is that the Fox guys are wrong, but it’s also true that most news doesn’t reach the TV for days or even weeks after the White House advisors have access to it. I think Obama even mentioned once that he didn’t watch TV news much since he usually had the important information before they did.
So the upshot is that whenever Trump has shrugged off his top advisors and waited for Sean Hannity to tell him what to do, there has always been a delay in his response time to a given problem. Up until now, this hasn’t caused too many problems over and above Trump being Trump, but the coronavirus has been a particularly time-sensitive issue. He handled it the same way he handled everything else, waiting for Fox to tell him what to do, throwing blame at Fox’s preferred targets, and not acknowledging the crisis really existed until his TV shows eventually began admitting that it did.
There’s obviously a lot wrong with how Fox has been handling the situation, but I think the scary thing is that Trump would have delayed taking any action on this even if Fox had been pushing to implement communism for the last 20 years. The disaster has been largely caused by the fact that Trump was never going to lift a finger until a guy on TV told him to.
Starfish
I think you described a lot of the trolling on Twitter pretty succinctly.
OzarkHillbilly
@Splitting Image:
Fixed that for you, free of charge.
geg6
WTF? Seriously? The NYT is garbage. Friedman should be fired for this bullshit. Jebus, it’s not enough we have the biggest idiot to ever run a country in charge, we have to see this crap put out to a credulous public? I fucking hate these mother fuckers.
Spanky
Fixed.
David Anderson
@MattF: give it another six months
Uncle Jeffy
Does anyone know If PPE manufacturers like 3M are working 24/7 on making this stuff yet?
Geminid
Spanky
Or we could just hand Friedman an infected N95 respirator and tell him to suck. on. this.
geg6
Jesus, and not to go all OT and all, but I just now got an email that I am required to attend a Zoom town hall with students on Friday. To answer questions. To which I don’t have many answers right now, at least until the new stimulus passes. At least the VA has moved quickly to get us instruction regarding GI Bill benefits. Pretty unexpected that they were the quickest to put a plan into place. But that Friday town hall! Shit, I’m going to have to shower, dress in something other than sweats (at least on top) and put makeup on. Totally not fair.
geg6
@Uncle Jeffy:
I think I read somewhere, don’t remember where, that they were gearing up for that a few days ago, but don’t remember there being a timeline for it.
SFAW
@David Anderson:
Nicely done
OzarkHillbilly
The horror… ;-)
SFAW
@geg6:
Just treat it as if you were in the maladministration: make shit up.
germy
NYT
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s not what you said the last time you had to put on makeup
schrodingers_cat
FWIW I think scientists need to rely on jargon less when communicating with the public. Jargon can make the arguments impenetrable to those outside the field.
NYT is MAGA Times, ignore completely.
Chyron HR
Imagine if there was a zombie movie where the President:
– Calls the Z-virus a hoax
– Refuses to let anyone get tested for infection
– Fires all the scientists who could have developed a cure
Even the dumbest red hat can understand that his face would need to get eaten, right?
SFAW
@Chyron HR:
Stay away from the brown acid.
Nelle
Odd to see a former student of mine (Gerry Doyle) pop up in a post.
Actually, my Facebook feed has changed dramatically in the last week. Music, creativity, encouragement to look out for those less fortunate. Condemn me for being on it, if you wish. I’ve lived in seven states and two countries. Former students and family members live around the world..family members in Kinshasa, Paris, rural Indonesia, Japan, and half the family is Canadian. In the last two days, I’ve heard from friends in Casablanca, London, and one who gave up his apartment to travel with the Orvis Eye Hospital, a jet he helped outfit with surgical units. Also getting updates from a friend in the new DRC parliament on the spread there. Right now, I’m getting value from it.
TS (the original)
My part of the world we are being told the shutdowns may last for 6 months – so 15 days sounds rather out of line with reality. I’m hoping the 6 months is out in the other direction.
Major debate down under is whether the schools should stay open with the Feds saying yes while some of the states are disagreeing. They close for the end of Term 1 shortly and it seems they are unlikely to reopen at the end of the scheduled holiday.
In 2 days the govt has passed a second stimulus bill which appears to be concentrated towards those who are unemployed & have little chance of being employed in the current situation. Being a RW government I am somewhat amazed at the level of help for the poorer end of our society.
We have a number of once government owned businesses that were privatised over the past many years. one of the main ones was Qantas. I would love for the government to have to buy it back – that would make something positive out of this horror show. No doubt they are more likely to given them money to survive.
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: Another Jaws analogy: Steve Mnuchin, staring at the rampaging Bear Market, gasps “We’re gonna need a bigger Dead Cat Bounce!”
Cheryl Rofer
@Nelle: Gerry is one of my faves on Twitter. He’s an editor for Reuters in Singapore (Hong Kong?) and tells it like it is. Good guy.
NotMax
Relevant to these times, TCM is showing Enemy of the People, an adaptation of Ibsen’s play about political, business and public relations efforts to distort or otherwise misdeal with a public medical crisis, Tuesday at 6 p.m. Eastern time.
Barbara
@MattF: The article was more nuanced but yes, it was irresponsible and wildly incomplete as of yesterday. Until there is widespread testing there will be widespread restrictions on gatherings. As testing of both the sick and the already exposed becomes widespread it will be much easier to lift restrictions one at a time — for instance, allowing low transmission risk retail, but perhaps continuing restrictions on spas, salons, and dental services because of close personal contact.
negative 1
I have a serious question. What is the eventual endgame to this, or what statistics/benchmarks/etc. are we looking for before relaxing restrictions? At some point this has to end, and when we gather won’t cases immediately spike? On the other hand, are we supposed to be sheltering-in-place until there’s a vaccine? Because that could take months or even a year. I am a cynic, but I don’t think people will stay off the roads/ out of work that long.
TheWesson
The simple case:
You need to isolate everyone who reasonably could have COVID-19.
Since we do not have enough testing, anybody (except the recovered) could have COVID-19.
So, until we have widespread testing, we need to isolate “everyone” (everyone not essential to life continuing anyhow.)
Ken
Hmm. Pass a massive tax cut primarily benefiting big corporations and the top few percent. Economic result after two years: Nothing much noticeable.
Tell a whole lot of minimum-wage fast-food workers, barbers and beauticians, store clerks, etc. to stop working. Economic result: Crash.
Almost makes you question what really creates a healthy economy.
Chyron HR
@negative 1:
Golly, didn’t Bernie (or one of his special musical guests) cover that in his talk show last night?
Another Scott
The Fed is firing up the helicopters to start dropping money.
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/488973-fed-announces-drastic-expansion-of-economic-rescue-efforts
Good, good. Powell sees how serious this is.
It would be nice if McConnell and Donnie did as well… Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Ken: Consumers.
Geminid
It is easy right now for a smart guy like Tom to say dumb things. The financial storm has been at it’s most intense the last couple weeks, although the recession/depression will surely last many months, hopefully not years. But as to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are in the calm before the storm. New cases in my state of Virginia are projected to peak the second week of May. I guess that means deaths will peak not long after. Friedman may be influenced by the fact he has surely been hit hard in the wallet. Maybe when the human cost of this epidemic is manifest he will write a couple of columns on how the incompetence and inaction of the Trump administration from February 1 till ~March 15 led us into this horrible mess.
Calouste
@negative 1: China is looking at 14 days of no new cases before relaxing the restrictions. So that’s been happening in most places, even in Wuhan where they are letting people into the city again.
negative 1
@Chyron HR: Way to stay on point! The world is going to hell and you’re worried about Sanders. Sounds like your priorities are in order!
MattF
@negative 1: The big difficulty is that we still don’t know, to within an order of magnitude, how widespread the infection is. Once testing becomes more common, and there are some facts to consider, we can have that policy debate.
BobS
@negative 1: We should all try to retain our ability to walk and chew gum simultaneously.
negative 1
@Calouste: Are they concerned about a ‘bounce-back’ though?
One thing that I have heard that makes sense is that as soon as we are all ‘back to normal’ or whatever that looks like, the cases will spike again. I know nothing about epidemiology but that would seem to make sense on a logical level.
My state’s original ‘closed until further notice’ period ends next week. Obviously that’s not realistic, but I worry that people will decide ‘well we waited it out’ and try and reopen.
tokyokie
So Friedman favors allowing more people to die in order to save the economy. Fine, Tom. You die first.
Funny how always he advocates positions from which he thinks his shopping-mall-heiress’s wife’s billions will protect him.
negative 1
@BobS: We could start with either one.
My state actually did really well with immediate shut-downs and keeping people away from each other, and accordingly has very few cases relatively speaking. But as I was explaining to someone else, the original ‘until further notice’ period ends for most businesses in my area on April 1. My guess is that many of them will try and reopen. Seems premature, obviously. But when asked ‘what are you waiting for, then’ I … really don’t know.
NotMax
@MattF
Therein hangs the tale.
Until aggressive, available, affordable, stripped of opprobrium testing is implemented – and followed up as necessary by a regimen of contact tracking, isolation, and no questions asked treatment in cases of severity – the path is socked in by fog.
Barbara
@Geminid: It might help to understand Friedman’s POV if you knew that his wife is an heir to one of the large shopping mall developers/landlord families. I think it’s Simon but I can’t remember. Of course, these properties are already under stress, but this surely isn’t going to help.
Bill Arnold
Steeplejack
@TS (the original):
Request for you—and everyone:
When you give your update from “my part of the world,” would it be possible to give us some idea of where the fuck that might be? Without jeopardizing your specific undisclosed location, of course.
I infer from “Qantas” that you are in Australia, but absent that information your report is 95% meaningless.
And, yes, you might have mentioned in some thread three months ago that you’re in Australia, but that doesn’t mean that everyone automatically remembers that.
Again, this is a general request, not just to you. Even in the Sunday garden chats, “Wow, lots of rain here today” doesn’t convey much out of context. One inch in Phoenix? Ten inches in Hawaii?
Cheryl Rofer
@negative 1: No easy answers to any of those questions. I’m thinking about doing a post on that but it’ll take some time.
TheWesson
The simple case:
You need to isolate everyone who reasonably could have COVID-19.
Since we do not have enough testing, anybody (except the recovered) could have COVID-19.
So, until we have widespread testing, we need to isolate practically “everyone” (everyone not essential to life continuing anyhow.)
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Damn, damn, damn. Thought for sure I’d remembered to switch off the shower cam.
:) :) :)
negative 1
@Cheryl Rofer: That would be totally awesome. I feel like there’s no information about that out there. This question sprung out of a discussion with my 7th grade daughter about when she can see her friends. In my not-hard-hit northeast US state, we’ve done really well on the response. But we have all of these ‘date-based’ benchmarks, and she ultimately asked (in so many words) what will be different on April1 (or April 15, or April 30) than now. And I think that in my community a lot of people are hanging their hats on these dates, without any thought as to what exactly is important about them or what ‘action-based’ benchmarks we’re trying to hit before relaxing something.
The Thin Black Duke
The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated a brutal reality about Capitalism: It don’t work too good when nobody can afford to buy anything.
p.a.
Those who achieve immunity must still maintain social distancing, correct? They can still transport the virus on their persons.
Bill Arnold
I went ballistic in a private signal chat when that appeared.[1] It was obviously from the first few paragraphs propaganda from the “Mountains of [other people’s] Corpses In Defense of Capitalism” [2] camp. So many lies in it, and it was so clumsy in execution. When I took notes a couple of days ago, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Ginn said the following about the author.[3]
Emergency wikipedia gaslighting by, one presumes, the Mountains Of Corpses in Defense of Capitalism camp, has removed the bits about breitbart etc but a google search of older date ranges shows up some of these (not breitbart, by that name). (Decide for yourself; here’s such an edit
I genuinely wonder if he has rich parents he’s hoping will die so that he can collect an early inheritance. They should disown him. In any event he deserves to be squashed like the bug that he is.
[1] e.g. Assertions about unproven modes of transmission meaning that they don’t happen is just evil.
south korea had a major cluster due to one infected person in a church group.: https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTERS/0100B5G33SB/index.html
[2] Mountains of Sacrifices in Defense of Capitalism – what true American patriot is against sacrifices to preserve the American Way?
[3] I have been presuming that this isn’t a full-up op with a fictional author because google searches of previous years find him.
negative 1
@The Thin Black Duke: Why, obviously that’s nonsense because there’s still corporate tax cuts! Have you even tried corporate tax cuts? Corporate tax cuts immediately solve everything!
Next you’re going to be saying that forcing every hospital to profit maximize has meant that they don’t want slack capacity in the number of beds, leading to an absolute horror show if there’s even a slight uptick in the number of patients. What could go wrong with that in a pandemic? Don’t worry, we’ll give them some corporate tax cuts!
Another Scott
@p.a.: Nobody really knows yet.
We’ll have to see what happens when China opens up Wuhan, when Italy re-opens, etc. We’re a few days behind Italy. We need to learn from their experiences.
All we have in the research papers are anecdotes, really – the studies are too small and anecdotal. All we really know is – absent massive, fast, and accurate testing – that all people keeping 6′ away from each other and washing their hands is the best way to stop the spread. With massive testing, finer control and restarting of the economy is possible.
Massive production of PPE; massive production of test kits and rapid and accurate testing and tracking infrastructure; and continuous messaging for people to stay home, wash their hands, and stay 6′ apart if they must go out, is the way forward. What happens after is anyone’s guess right now.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That and because Trump is a narcissist Trump just does nothing but undermines his staff and then tells them they suck. I think it was more safer to say Trump real motive was by being a dick on the pandemic Trump realized the people around him stopped carrying about his approval on this, so Trump pretended he had a change a heart and now he thinks it’s safe he is back to being a dick with them.
Bill Arnold
@TheWesson:
These demonspeople are propagandizing for the alternative;
Mountains of SkullsSacrifices in Defense of The American Way.
OGLiberal
One thing about this virus that is somewhat different than a lot of others in the past is that it knows no class boundaries. In fact, in my county in NJ – Monmouth – the two towns that have, by far, the largest number of confirmed cased are pretty upper middle class/wealthy – the type of folks who work in NYC and bump into a lot of people from a lot of different places or who have the means to travel abroad. This is purely anecdotal, of course. (well, not the numbers – but I have no idea how the folks in these two towns contracted the virus)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Oh I get it, Trump is in with the Virus Deniers and there has been hints that social distancing works, so like all Science Deniers he would rather burn the country down than admit he was wrong.
debbie
Some country we’re living in. / puke emoji /
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
These guys are the logical result of those guys who invaded businesses back in the 1980s, armed with their MBA degrees and shouting, “Only bottom-line efficiencies matter!”
Geminid
My Atlanta friend, who studies Trump’s mentality more than I care to, observed that, narcissist that he is, Trump has a deep need to stand center stage. But now the virus stands center stage.
Uncle Cosmo
“I think we’re gonna need a bigger
boattumbril.”Uncle Cosmo
@Steeplejack: HEAR! MOTHER! FUCKING! HEAR!!
I am so goddamned sick & tired of seeing a post saying “Here where I am” with no further location information & then hearing the poster shriek How dare you try to locate me! when anyone asks where “here” is.
(FTR I am in the City of Baltimore – that’s “Bawlmer, Murlin, hon!” – & have never been shy of disclosing the fact.)
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Above center stage. He is the holly embodiment of narcissism. Just ask him. He wishes he could obtain mediocrity because he knows he’s a failure but he can’t admit that, even to himself. So he does what every narcissist does, he over compensates. And being a failure, he even overcompensates badly. He’s been this way for his entire life, think of it that he’s failed even at failing, by his constant need to not be himself, he’s become more like himself.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s a helpful thread from Tom Bossert, who was one of the more capable of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks for the pointer.
I honestly expect DC and the surrounding suburban counties to be a “hot spot”. What happens to the US government response then?
:-(
McConnell needs to stop standing in the way. The Leadership needs to get on the ball and figure out how to conduct legislative and executive business remotely.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
moscow mitch does need to stop standing in the way and working towards bankrupting the country.
The key is that he doesn’t give a good god damn about the country, only himself and his betters, that pay him to be the douchebag he is.
Sorry if that type of talk will only make it worse, telling him what his job is and telling him to do it hasn’t done squat in that direction either.
JaneE
The GOP will do everything it can to enrich the already rich and eliminate the poor as much as possible. SARS-CoV-2 is an opportunity they will not pass up on both counts. Human lives are just raw materials to be consumed by industry, and of no value at all if they can’t be made to produce wealth for their
ownersbosses. Better a million dead than .01 drop in GDP.I used to think that my opinions were over the top and outright crazy, but the longer I live the less I see reason to change them.
The current situation will have effects for a century or more. Some will constitute progress, some will not. Until the last couple of weeks, I was starting to wonder if my “Depression mentality” was really still necessary. Now I am very glad to be able to live out of the pantry for a month.
opiejeanne
@Uncle Jeffy: There’s a furniture manufacturer, couches and related items, in Mukilteo, WA that has switched to making masks.
Bill Arnold
@OGLiberal:
I’ve been avoiding known or suspected DJ Trump voters, because they are less likely to take this seriously and take precautions. Too many of them are curious about or believe and repeat the “Mammon Demands Mass Sacrifices” line of arguments that Cheryl has been more polite about.