Preregistering is when you write down what you believe and what you expect before you go about investigating or researching some kind of question. Its a scientific technique meant to combat bias and flukey results in scientific experiments. The idea is that by writing down what you expect you can evaluate your expectations later on. If, for example, you make a bunch of predictions or hypotheses about the world, and they all turn out to be true, then one of the following would have to be true:
- You have super amazing judgement
- You didnt make challenging enough predictions or hypotheses. You set the bar too low and didnt make any meaningful evaluations about the world
- You are fooling yourself: you didnt get things right but you think you did by interpretting results in a biased way
For scientists, this could mean saying "I think sugar consumption causes heart disease, and I will prove this by seeing if people who have heart disease have a history of eating a lot of sugar". They might be right or wrong about every piece of that statment. The experiment they proposed could even be seriously flawed in its design. But at the very least, saying what they think beforehand establishes transparency and it helps us evaluate the credibility of their scientific work by seeing if there is consistency and honesty in what they set about researching.
Preregistering doesnt just have to be for scientists. We are all checking the world around us and making judgements. Coronavirus is a big thing right now. Its kind of like a big natural scientific experiment. A lot of things are going to happen (or not happen). I am going to preregister the things I am thinking about now, March 21st 2020. This way I cant say like "Ah, I knew that all along" if I didnt, or I can look back and think "I was onto something, I should rely on that line of reasoning a little bit stronger next time" or the opposite.
People were saying for a while that surgical masks and respirators dont do anything. My current feeling is that they probably do work- after all, why would medical professionals and asian people use them if they didnt think they worked? Its a barrier of some kind over your mouth- the entrance and exit for the virus. I suppose it is possible that there are some caveats about it: perhaps it only stops sick people from transmitting, or perhaps only medical professionals know how to properly use them. Still tho: caveats would be caveats, not a contradiction to the main fact that they are indeed useful. Its a little anecdotal, but many asian countries are handling Coronavirus pretty well. Maybe its the masks?
The whole country could end up in a strong emergency lock down which will include everyone taking things seriously and wearing masks. In which case its going to be pretty frustrating thinking of all the people- even doctors and experts- saying masks dont work. It would seem they were not using their heads to give an honest thought through evaluation of masks, but rather, just trying to look clever or something.
Doctors and medical professionals are going to be on the front lines of helping people who get coronavirus. I think they will be putting themselves in harms way. Some medical professions will even die in the process. This will make them heros.
Also, I have been to doctors offices a lot in the last few months. Since I am worried about coronavirus, and catching coronavirus at doctors offices, I have brought coronavirus up everytime. Usually I say I am worried about it and I want to make sure I dont catch it at their office. Here are the responses Ive gotten:
- I had some blood work done, and the blood lab technician coughed, and I told her I am worried about Coronavirus, suggesting I dont watch to catch it from her. She seemed irritated and said "I DONT HAVE CORONAVIRUS".
- I told my family doctor my wife is pregnant, and that we are worried about coronavirus. She said "Its just the flu".
- I went to a blood lab with my pregnant wife wearing a mask and I told the technician it is because I am worried about coronavirus and she said "Its nothing if you are healthy".
- My pregnant wife and I went to a genetic counselor, and my wife mentioned we were thinking about wearing masks to the appointment, and the counselor said "You shouldnt wear those. Medical professionals need them" (but vulnerable pregnant women dont?)
- At an ultrasound appointment a doctor told us "We just dont know anything about Coronavirus, so you shouldnt worry"
- I went to an ear nose and throat doctor. He needed to look into my nose. Before he did it I said "Wait, I am terrified about Coronavirus" he said "Yeah me too, let me go and get our most recently sanitized equipment for you".
So, aside from the ENT doctor, medical folks in my area as of March 8th-ish didnt seem worried at all. I have seen a lot of doctors online and in the media who have similar attitudes. Even the virologists at the CDC have posted estimates for total Coronavirus cases that seem surprisingly optimistic to me. Isnt that weird? If coronavirus ends up as a really big problem, it would seem like they didnt really know. If they didnt know, it seems like they should have said "I dont know". Predicting deadly pandemics understandably not the expertise of many doctors, so I wouldnt fault anyone for not knowing. If Coronavirus goes badly then I just dont have a nice interpretation of that and it would create a very confusing and mixed impression for me. How could they be both the heros doing all the heavy lifting and the phony experts who failed to ring the alarm when we needed them to?
People like human rights. Realistically, something needs to enforce and protect human rights. For example, we consider a fair trial to be a human right, but that requires a court system, which requires expert lawyers and judges, who require salaries. So, you need money to have a fair trial. If you just dont have what it takes to have a court system, then you dont have that human right. Wealth is naturally correlated with human rights because they cost something and wealth pays those costs.
People get married. And to keep a marriage together you have to like being with your partner. It is easier to be likable when you yourself are doing good. You are a better spouse when you are happy- for whatever reason- whether that be enough sleep, or good meals, or whatever else material things might help you out. Money can help with nearly any conceivable material problem. Wealth helps marriages because it helps the individuals in marriages, and individual wellbeing is a critical part of the marriage's success.
These examples can be replicated to all sorts of different problems, and they create a bigger point, which is that broadly speaking, if you want to solve any problem, it helps to be wealthier. If a society becomes wealthier is also solves its problems.
It is not clear yet, but Coronavirus could be very similar to the Spanish Flu, which killed and infected a lot of people. But that was a long time ago, when people were much less wealthy. So maybe wealth can solve Coronavirus. Maybe we are so wealthy, that it will be effortless for us to solve this problem, whereas the people of the 1910s simply could not afford the solutions to the Spanish Flu. Maybe it is easy to prepare and quarantine when you have the internet, but its impossible to prepare or quarantine with the information technology or 1918.
I think communism is really bad. Right now, the news says China has coronavirus contained. Its not gone, but, the rates of infection arent going up. So, it could turn out that China had the will and way to conquer the problem and they did just that. If that turns out to be true, then I guess that is a credit to authoritarian administrative states like the ones communists prop up. They saw the problem, acted fast and appropriately, and solved it.
Or it could turn out that things are not as they seem. It could turn out it is not contained at all and that somehow they have hid the truth from the world. If it is contained then I guess I will have to think "Hmm, I was worried about lying communists hiding the truth, and it turned out to be nothing."
Also, I roughly believe that disease and war come together (I guess I dont believe that disease causes war tho). Coronavirus could be a destabilizing force in the world. A calculating malicious communist government could pounce at the opportunity. Maybe China will take this as their chance to invade Taiwan? This all seems pretty far fetched, but worth considering. Again, if China doesnt exploit the situation, I will have to check myself for considering this possibility in the first place.
Singapore seems to have everything under control. I like Singapore, so if Singapore turns out to have handled the problem well in the long run, well.. I will like Singapore even more!
Theres a famous case of American Somoa going into a total lock down during the Spanish flu and ending up as big winners because they suffered 0 cases of Spanish flu, while their neighboring polynesians all had huge fatality rates due to the Spanish flu.
It could be that small local governments are more capable of handling these problems than big clunky national governments, and we might get some examples like American Samoa. I hadnt had much of opinion on small scale local governments, but this could change my mind into thinking that it is an underpowered level of government. I would become a bit more of a states rights person and a city-states person.
We could even talk about lower levels of administration: what if individuals are the real winners? What if some people do great jobs protecting themselves or others by their own individual efforts? What if neighborhoods close their borders? What if people organize into "work quarantines" where a company collectively stops socializing with outsiders? All these units of society could turn out to be winners.
It looks like America is late to the game of testing people for coronavirus. The people I know who are pro-universal healthcare have taken this opportunity to show how bad US healthcare is. The most salient story I have heard is someone who had to pay $3,000 out of pocket to be tested. Which is offensive because he is suffering a huge financial burden for doing the right thing.
But what if, overall, the fatality or infection rates of coronavirus in the US end up being lower than in Europe? Then I would think that testing wasnt actually the critical factor and something else was, like lock downs, early response, or ICUs (or something completely unrelated to our response, like demographics or culture). Then it would seem like those people really missed the mark by insisting the government needs to get in there and test everyone. If voters, and the governments they createm failed to know what the critical factors for combatting coronavirus even were, then I would become more libertarian.
Or if they were right I would lean a little bit more to the negation of that point.
I have been thinking coronavirus is a big problem. I keep ringing the bell about this in my social circles. I have the least optimistic opinion about this than anyone I know. If it turns out to be nothing I am going to have to really introspect about what went wrong with my own judgement. Could it be that its just fun to be alarmist? Could it be that since my wife is pregnant, our personal risk is contaminating my judgement? Could it be that viruses and health stuff break my brain? It seems like people cant think straight about disease and biological things.
Then also, lots of people are saying we shouldnt freak out. "Dont panic" is a phrase I am sick of hearing. My thoughts are that we should do the right thing, and if we have to panic in order to do so, then so be it! We should be thinking about and preparing for dangers. The "Dont panic" crowd in practice just seems to be "Dont think about it", "Dont prepare".
I am open to lots of different ideas about what could be done (if anything) and the nature of the situation generally. I would respectfully consider the idea that nothing should be done. But to assert that there is nothing at all to worry about is frustrating. Certainly a government and people who do not admit there is any problem at all, and therefore do nothing, will result in the contagious and deadly virus infecting a large chunk (20%-60%) of everyone.