Talk:2395: Covid Precaution Level

The problem is precautions that ARE insufficient feel excessive to many people and precautions that are excessive FEEL insufficient to many others - and science seems to be unable to provide definitive answers to replace "feelings" with logic 162.158.126.104 23:59, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

To paraphrase Rumsfeld: "You fight a pandemic with the knowledge you have, not the knowledge you want". You place far too high a burden on science. Science, logic and expertise are by far the most useful things we have, but the answers they give are going to be phrased as "probably", "perhaps", "more likely than not", and "we don't know". And the answers are going to change as we learn things. Expecting immediate, definitive answers has killed many people.172.68.65.149 19:58, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

To save the person(s) effort who will ultimately write this into the explanation/transcript in a legible manner: There are 13 subdivisions in Insufficient, 14 subdivisions in Excessive, roughly (close enough to look deliberate, but sloppily so) 6 divisions shared, across a scale of 21 effective divisions. Enjoy! 162.158.158.155 00:08, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I wonder what is meant by the title text exactly, is the one kind of feedback you can get getting the disease? The way it is phrases it feels like "dying from covid" is the final feedback (you can only get it once and then it's too late). But just getting infected is already some feedback isn't it?

Flekkie (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The title text says definitive feedback, which I took to mean deaths. Numbers of those infected isn't inherently definitive as the precautions might affect how or if they recover. --162.158.255.152 05:01, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I interpreted the title text as referring to contracting COVID. The point of the precautions is to keep from contracting it: if you do contract it, that's definitive feedback that your precautions were insufficient; and once you're already infected, it's too late to do anything to prevent that infection. If COVID is like most other diseases (and I'm not sure if anyone knows for sure whether it is or not), then once you've had it once, you won't be able to contract it again, thanks your immune system having built up a resistance to it. --Someone Else 37 (talk) 05:22, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

It is not. It is definitely possible to get COVID-19 again, although it is probably much less likely. There are documented cases of someone recovering and then being reinfected, including at least one in which they DNA tested the virus to confirm that it really was a separate infection and not a recurrence of something that had been in remission.172.69.35.126 05:57, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The statistics show a clear picture, it is highly improbable to catch Covid again, the remaining cases are of course bad for the individual, but completely insignificant on the large scale of a global epidemic. --162.158.92.156 22:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

FWIW I also didn't figure out what feedback he meant. There's all sorts of usable feedback to use, but any change in precautions takes at least a few weeks to show up in the feedback. Still, as frustrating as that is, it's not something you can "only get once but then it's too late". --NeatNit (talk) 07:33, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I think "can only get once" is supposed to be in contrast to, say, a thermostat, where you keep getting feedback until you change the settings. With COVID, once the restrictions have had an impact, you can "only get [the magnitude of impact] once but then it's too late [to measure again]". Kinda saying humans don't work well with delayed gratification. 141.101.99.7 17:15, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

C’mon people. Plainly the feedback he was referring to was infection. The only certain way to determine that you’ve been irresponsible is to be infected. Lightcaller (talk) 16:59, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

In many jurisdictions, the rules themselves actually are not a single linear 'diallable' level of restriction, often with schools (or even sub-ranges of schooling ages, separately) being fully opened or closed not in complete synchrony with the treatment of sporting events, retail premises, food/drink (in-house/take-away), entertainment venues, public mass-transport, etc, although this is more like the fine-tuning of a graphic-equaliser on an audio system. But for the sake of simplicity the given government/whatever then still twiddles just the master volume knob (or at least the 5.1 balancing ones for regional adjustment) as a first resort when they get feedback about their chosen mix's effectiveness. - This depicted bare-bones 'master control dial' simplification of measures echoes the apparent nature of (some bits of) the Universe Control Console, though, and (contradictory labelling aside) is probably how those in control of the ramp-up/down of measures wish it could be done. 141.101.98.97 09:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what China did, but from those countries that I know anything of, none have had "excessive" precautions, all of them were in the "insufficient" range. So whose viewpoint did Randall draw here? His own? The average public? An arbitrary sample group? … Fabian42 (talk) 09:50, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Maybe not whole countries, but I know of at least one city where the precaution looks extremely excessive, but also extremely sufficient; Point Roberts, WA, which has zero cases but is prevented by border guards from visiting Canada and a two hour boat ride with medical quarantine from the United States. Also, I would place the State of Oregon, who just crossed it's 1000th COVID-19 death, just slightly to the left of the rightmost portion of insufficient- but the repeated total lockdowns are having a great cost on the economy and human behavior- murders, suicides, and bankruptcies are up greatly, but other causes of death are down.Seebert (talk) 13:38, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Please note that this comic only mentions precautions that FEEL either excessive or insufficient. It makes no statement regarding whether any precautions actually are excessive or insufficient.

Hi - I signed up for an account here just to say - I sense an assumption on this page that this comic is about comparing different people’s feelings about covid precautions. That is certainly a possible explanation. But I think it’s quite possible that the comic could be comparing conflicting feelings within one individual. In my reading, lot of the covid comics address this kind of uncertainty (I can reference some if that would be helpful). I’m not sure if y’all will agree with this point, nor whether it merits an edit of the explanation, but I wanted to bring it into the discussion. Thanks for the good work you all put into this site!--Coy casket (talk) 22:08, 8 December 2020 (UTC)