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Dec 26, 2021·edited Dec 26, 2021

The things about rapid tests is that there aren't any.

With omicron cases hitting all around my circle in ways unknown since the start of the pandemic - and this despite everyone being vaccinated up to the legal limit - people are scrambling, but it now feels like the Soviet supply system and it takes incredible foresight, patience, luck, or connections to get your hands on one.

This is bad for all kinds of obvious reasons, but I think one that is likely to go under-reported is the fact that many organizations - especially but by no means limited to government ones - established policies about what to do if someone started having symptoms which relied upon the assumption that rapid and accurate test results would be plentiful, cheap, and easy to obtain. Thus a minor burden with quick resolution and not too much to ask of already very frustrated parents, students, and workers.

My impression is that no one bothered to ask what they would do if, for whatever reason, that assumption no longer held, and sending everybody to PCR all the time was infeasible. Most organizations are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. They can't tell people to "just get a test" anymore, they are unwilling to tell people to isolate for extended periods of time, and they are reluctant to do nothing at all.

So we are just going to get a lot of chaos and flailing.

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"Because a bunch of demagogues peddled phony conspiracy theories that the vaccine was risky or less than highly effective, vaccination rates remained disappointingly low. Thousands died."

The vaccines are less than highly effective:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.20.21267966v2.full.pdf

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Aren't we all getting rapid tests mailed to us in January? 500 million going out? My family could have used them this weekend.

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founding

Re: "[Bruce Schneier] says that there are four “societal pressures” that induce cooperation: Moral pressures (internalized desires to cooperate); the value of reputation; institutional and legal incentives; and security systems."

It is useful to distinguish proactive morality (unilateral cooperation) and reactive morality (conditional cooperation, sideward glances). First-movers and unconditional cooperators might be necessary in many contexts to initiate cooperation, which reciprocators then amplify. Charismatic first-movers have played crucial roles in the emergence of various major social movements. "Here I stand, for I can do no other." "I have a dream." "La mafia è una montagna di merda."

(Note: It should go without saying, charismatic initiative, reciprocation, and social movements -- in a word, cooperation -- can be predatory towards outsiders, destructive, and even self-destructive.)

If, when I believe that I risk neither fine (incentives) nor arrest (security systems), I nonetheless don't litter, then my motivation may be either principle, fairness, or reputation -- or a psychologically complex (or possibly confused) mix of these three motivations. Principle motivates unilateral cooperation. Fairness motivates conditional cooperation if I hesitate to be a sucker, but observe or believe that others don't litter. Reputation motivates conditional cooperation if I believe that others, who can shape my reputation, and who condemn littering, might observe me (or learn by hearsay about my littering).

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That Scott Sumner piece also has a link to a piece by Ed West that has some very interesting comparisons between our moralizing Woke times and the moralizing Victorian times, which were a reaction against the preceding Regency period.

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