SIGNIFYING NOTHING

“…a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. “  -Macbeth by William Shakespeare

And so, begins our tale with that quote from Macbeth, a Shakespearean play. The stage has been lit up with bright lights and much fanfare. The spotlights are aglow and the “poor player” steps on the stage and looks bewildered for a moment, then finds his stride and erupts into a most alluring and mystifying speech for all to hear. The audience is transfixed and motionless, riveted to their seats awaiting the next uttered melodic syllable. The moment passes and lights fade, the “player” dissolves into the darkness, and the audience leaves in single file bewildered and disoriented.

What has happened over the past three months is nothing short of a play orchestrated by a few on the many. A play that may have cost many their livelihood and ultimately their lives. Act one takes us into an office chaired by a be-speckled “scientist” who determined that using outdated software with some tweaks in the codebase, could magisterially predict the future. His determinant may have lacked the necessary tools, yet he soldiered on with his predictions. The predictions were so dire that every lowly mind fell lockstep behind them. The player never ceded to the fact that the computer code might be using a single initial variable that might have been erroneous. A further critical review showed that even using the same parameters and the single variable the computer output showed a wide swath of unrelatable non-conforming results. Nope, he marched on the stage and delivered a powerful soliloquy to the willing, ticket holder audience. His complex model suggested that the reliability of his model was based on a highly accurate deterministic nuanced variable “seed” grounded in reality. He further claimed in these captivating terms, “this has historically been considered acceptable because of the general stochastic nature of the model.” The world was awash with the spellbinding ferocity of his monologue. He discussed the many iterations that he had used with some small non-determinant errors in the scheme of things. To some, the 80,000 predicted deaths were more than “non-determinant,” but not to the epidemiologist “player.” There was no mention of error rates when using parallel computing where errors were magnified when iterations achieved high-speed throughputs, nor the potential of those tiny miscreants called “Heisenbugs” that can make most outputs “signify nothing.” Yet this piper piped, and the music played which soothed the fears of the many in attendance. Alarmed by the horrible future that lay ahead, yet disquietly comforted by the preventative measures of shuttered doors and isolation that would defeat this “plague,” and return their universe to a higher version of harmony.

When the play was over and the “player” had been regaled, destined for greatness, the spotlight disappeared as did he, returning back to the apple of his eye and resigned to his fate as an interloper.

Meanwhile under the shadows of the greatest “Play,” the world had ever seen, the Second Act saw the doors starting to shutter in lockstep with the dictates of the easily distracted policy-makers. Fear spread through societies like volatile fuel ignited by a spark. Nations both under authoritarian rule and democratic rule clamped down on the basic liberties of their citizens. The world was ablaze with news as each new case was glorified in headlines and each new resulting death from the plague as a means for more restrictions on freedom. The standstill in commerce caused a significant decline in the economic activity and bode a serious blow, to the future of each nation harnessed by the dictatorial dictates of the few. Countries with the means paid the citizens to keep the economy moving temporarily, but those without such means saw the policy harm to the youngest in their midst with a rising tide of childhood malnutrition. The policy-makers and their marketing accessories continued to gloat about a restricted shutdown in perpetuity till something was done about the plague. They modeled forecast using similar computer codes as previous with dire circumstances if the people were set free to start their lives again. The predictions of 200,000 cases a day with over 350,000 deaths from the plague if the people were allowed to return to their normal lives were broadcast for all to see and shiver in fear. However, a piece of little-known evidence was glossed over that the people actually contracting this “plague” were those huddled in their homes behind shuttered doors. More evidence suggesting that the in the name of “public good,” some of the plague victims were placed in Nursing Homes for the elderly where the deaths mounted and accounted for a large tragedy in numbers. Some estimated the deaths from those policies/mandates by the governing individuals cost almost 45% of the total deaths from the plague. Further analysis on the shutdown of planned healthcare estimated that 80,000 cancer diagnoses would be missed and 6200 untimely deaths from these diagnoses. Other diseases including, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease, and lung disease would suffer a similar fate due to fear of contracting the plague from venturing out into the open. In fact, the fear instilled in the populace was so strong that 3 out of 4 people thought that restrictions on liberty and freedom should continue for fear of the escalating infections and deaths from this plague. The marketers and promoters of this “pandemic” had achieved their version of utopia.

Governors heeded to their new-found power and ejected executive order on a daily basis and disciplined anyone, not in compliance with their edicts. This was the utopia some had secretly yearned for and dreamt. Citizens  were bereft of their ability to make a living for themselves while the ruling class steadied with a steady paycheck clamped down further. Policies with no merit surfaced; you could not give a haircut, go to the beaches or the parks, or golf courses, but you could visit the buildings of large retailers for goods and services. Power being the strongest known aphrodisiac, created nuances to stick to the weak individual at the hem. Goal-posts started to shift: From “Flattening the Curve” to “universal Testing” to “Availability of Vaccine” became the war-cry before liberty would be regranted by these people-servants turned tyrants and before freedom was earned.

But as all things real and fictional reveal themselves, so did this plague. Locking down seemed to harm more. The despair form job loss, the abuse from depression, the turmoil from lost wages, the foreclosures, the bankruptcies, the destruction of the economies had a larger price. One that had started to unfold before the seeing eyes. 

Meanwhile, some states in the United States decided to forgo the warnings and maintained their functioning economies and freedoms. As William Briggs showed, the States listed below have a substantially diminished number of deaths from this plague: In deaths (XXX) per million (5/7/2020) “using the COVID Tracking Project’s numbers): Iowa (111), Oklahoma (73), Nebraska (64), North Dakota (56), South Dakota (50), Arkansas (32), Utah (25), and Wyoming (14).” While the States with the strictest clamped down restrictions: “California (83), Illinois (330), Michigan (490), New York (1162), New Jersey (1166)” were a runaway-disasters!

When this “Play” is ultimately analyzed and the dust settles, it should give us pause. The belief in modeling based on faulty premises and inadequate tools or even with adequate tools should be countered with well-reasoned thoughts. Perhaps the Insurance Actuaries are better at forecasting the future of pandemics than self-appointed experts and epidemiologists playing with computer codes.

Plagues and Pandemics have a short shelf-life. They create havoc for a few weeks or months and then they are gone. It is the nonsensical policies of the grifted, the power-hungry, and the least intelligent amongst us that make human disasters out of natural events. A sane policy would have been sheltering the high-risk population and allow the rest to create herd-immunity for the benefit of all. In this case, the vulnerable were subjected to direct harm by locking them in with the asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic individuals while everyone was sheltered to increase the chance of injury to those that could be harmed.

Economies take a long time to wind up and deliver the promise of wealth and security, but they can wind down suddenly and lay waste to nations and hurl havoc on their citizenry. Decisions made through the eyes of a select few with blinders must be tempered by the many who face the daily turmoil of survival. The future is still us. The future is still tomorrow. Perhaps we will learn a hard lesson and be stronger for it. 

I pray so.