I have mentioned the revelation that many of our experts, while expert in a narrow domain, often are out of their depth when called to make judgments and assessments on complex, loosely coupled chaotic systems. They know their domain. They often know how it is coupled with the other loose systems. What they often do not know is how an action in one system domain ripples through the rest of the aggregated system. They end up being dramatically wrong, even though they are smart and well informed.
This is well traveled territory and well researched by those such as Philip Tetlock. It is not a snarky condemnation of experts and expertise, it is an acknowledgement of the limits of expertise.
Another mask slipping is, of course, the mainstream media, but that is another post.
The one that keeps leaping up for me is the profound unawareness of many - public intellectuals, academics, politicians, mainstream media, etc. - that we live in a republican federal form of government founded on the rule of law, consent of the governed, and protection of minority rights. Not minority rights in the racist sense, minority rights in the sense of any identifiable minority whose rights need protecting from totalitarian suppression of the majority.
The Electoral College has been a longstanding canary in the coal mine. Each election cycle which turns up an electoral college victory without a numeric straight democracy headcount majority (many of them) is roundly denounced as anti-democratic. There are demands for reform, for the abolishment of the Electoral College. Adjustments to how states allocate their electoral college votes, etc.
As if none of the complainers had any knowledge of constitutional history or the problem for which the Electoral College is a solution. Those most avid in their protestations of minority rights are also the most fervid in their desire to revert to the tyranny of the majority.
The longstanding nature of the complaints makes you shake your head and wonder how stupid can so many otherwise credentialed people be.
Something similar is happening with Covid-19. In any emergency, being a republic, responsibility for resolution of the emergency is devolved to the lowest level of government: city/county, then state, then federal.
A hurricane hits Florida or Louisiana. Who is most responsible for the response? Of course, the state Governor. They may and do call on the Federal government to assist, but the Feds can do little till requested. All problems are local problems, dealt with locally. Or by area within the state, or federally when it is multiple states.
If New York has inadequate supplies set aside for the Covid-19 outbreak, who is responsible? The Governor, of course. And the Governor can call on the Federal government for assistance.
Much of the mainstream media, no longer having news staff in states, counties or more than a handful of cities views all problems as national problems for Washington to fix. Not accepting the established federal system and not comprehending the constraints of the federal government and even on the state and local governments.
We are a nation of laws, not men, and we survive by the consent of the governed.
Fortunately, as diverse in virtually every conceivable way as we are, we still do have a bedrock, a silent majority, who accept and believe in republican federalism and the rule of law.
Many or most of the quarantines or lock-downs are set by county/city or by state. And most are unlikely unconstitutional to a greater or lesser degree. Very fortunately, as much as we are committed to republican federalism, we are also a fiercely communitarian nation (loosely defined) as early observed by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831.
We are committed to republican federalism, rule of law and consent of the governed but we are also fiercely pragmatic and willing to protect family, friends and community.
On the right, there are an increasing number of voices who are concerned by all the manifestations of totalitarian coercion as manifested by the quarantines. They were initially quiet, I suspect, because they are also strongly communitarian. But the longer the lockdowns continue, the louder the voices rise in opposition.
The governments (local, state, and federal) are treading the delicate line between the inherent uncertainty of the science driving their decisions and the recognition that we should never be in the position of the public acting against unconstitutional orders. The communitarian strand of our national DNA will hold people in place for some period while the science remains murky and the legal authority of the quarantines uncontested. But it won't last long. It will unravel.
Much of this bubbling, frothy observation is crystalized by a NYT article today, How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York’s Virus Fight by J. David Goodman. New York, with perhaps a third of the cases and fatalities as best we can crudely estimate, is the current epicenter.
The Federal government can assist and apparently, based on comments from both the Governor and the President, support has been proactive and available. But the effectiveness of the response is substantially dependent on the effectiveness of state and local government. In some places and in some states, that has been admirably effective. In many, it has been abysmal.
My point is not to critique a bunch of local politicians, worthy as they may be of such criticism.
My point is that there seems to be an inversion of the pyramid of news against the pyramid of constitutional responsibilities.
The mainstream media seem to spend eighty percent of their coverage on the Federal Government, 15% on State Government and 5% on County or City government. In terms of who has responsibility for delivering services and planning responses to emergencies, it is practically the reverse. Something more like 70% County and City, 20% State and 10% Federal.
That is a pretty profound mismatch. Misrepresentation isn't even the right way to put it. It is a huge cognitive refraction. What is being represented as reality is only tenuously related to that reality. When 10% of what is being done is represented as 70% of the impact, misinterpretation is natural, bad decision proliferate, and accountability is averted, making the whole system more fragile and subject to failure.
Why does the mainstream media have this cognitive refraction problem? Consolidation of the industry, centralization into 3-4 regional large cities, partisan bias, collapse of commercial business model (loss of reporters and editors), are all candidates hypotheses and, I suspect, certainly contributive to the phenomena.
I hope, coming out of this stress test, we see some self-instituted reforms within the mainstream media, and a reinvigoration of state and local government accountability by citizens. If the chain is only strong as it weakest link, we have an immensely strong constitutional chain with some notable, though very select, weak links in the federal, state, and local governments. Particular states, particular federal agencies, particular cities. Local citizens voting for accountability are the best antidote.
The article referenced above simply serves as a particular example.
A 39-year-old woman took Flight 701 from Doha, Qatar, to John F. Kennedy International Airport in late February, the final leg of her trip home to New York City from Iran.It is much cheaper for the mainstream media to publish press releases and opinion columns from Washington, D.C. overweighted with partisan rhetoric. The reality of what is happening is far more shaped by local government which is thinly reported.
A week later, on March 1, she tested positive for the coronavirus, the first confirmed case in New York City of an outbreak that had already devastated China and parts of Europe. The next day, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, appearing with Mayor Bill de Blasio at a news conference, promised that health investigators would track down every person on the woman’s flight. But no one did.
A day later, a lawyer from New Rochelle, a New York City suburb, tested positive for the virus — an alarming sign because he had not traveled to any affected country, suggesting community spread was already taking place.
Although city investigators had traced the lawyer’s whereabouts and connections to the most crowded corridors of Manhattan, the state’s efforts focused on the suburb, not the city, and Mr. de Blasio urged the public not to worry. “We’ll tell you the second we think you should change your behavior,” the mayor said on March 5.
For many days after the first positive test, as the coronavirus silently spread throughout the New York region, Mr. Cuomo, Mr. de Blasio and their top aides projected an unswerving confidence that the outbreak would be readily contained.
There would be cases, they repeatedly said, but New York’s hospitals were some of the best in the world. Plans were in place. Responses had been rehearsed during “tabletop” exercises. After all, the city had been here before — Ebola, Zika, the H1N1 virus, even Sept. 11.
“Excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers — I speak for the mayor also on this one — we think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York,” Mr. Cuomo said on March 2. “So, when you’re saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”
But now, New York City and the surrounding suburbs have become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, with far more cases than many countries have. More than 138,000 people in the state have tested positive for the virus, with nearly all of them in the city and nearby suburbs.
On Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo announced that 731 more people had died of the virus, the state’s highest one-day total yet. The overall death toll in New York is 5,489 people.
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