Philosopher, Andrew Feenberg reflects on COVID
As a philosopher I have been asked to say something deep about the pandemic. I have abstained from commenting so far because I have nothing deep to say, but maybe a superficial comment is useful.
Testing and tracing works by interrupting the growth of the pandemic, which itself depends on human behavior. The interaction of individuals who speak and touch each other drives the infection. It is difficult to convince people to cease these innocent behaviors in part because political leaders obfuscate the issue, but also because two unfamiliar mathematical concepts are involved. Individuals who do not understand these concepts are easily convinced things are under control when in fact they are not.
The first of these concepts is exponential growth. If each infected person infects more than one healthy individual, the disease spreads with astonishing rapidity. A first case infects two, and the two infect four, the four eight, and so on until huge numbers are reached. What is difficult for people to understand is how quickly the numbers add up. Everyone should be introduced to this Indian tale as a mental prophylaxis.
“According to the legend, God Krishna once appeared in the form of a sage in the court of the king who ruled the region and challenged him for a game of chess. The king being a chess enthusiast himself gladly accepted the invitation. The prize had to be decided before the game and the king asked the sage to choose his prize in case he won. The sage told the king that he had a very modest claim and being a man of few material needs, all he wished was a few grains of rice. The amount of rice itself shall be determined using the chess-board in the following manner. One grain of rice shall be placed in the first square, two grains in the second square, four in the third square, eight in the fourth square, sixteen in 5th square and so on. Every square will have double of its predecessor. The king lost the game and sage demanded the agreed-upon prize. As he started adding grains of rice to the chess board, the king soon realised the true nature of the sage's demands. The royal granary soon ran out of grains of rice. The king realised that he will never be able to fulfill the promised reward as the number of grains was increasing as a geometric progression and the total amount of rice required for a 64-squared chess board is 9,223,372,036,854,775,809 translating to trillions of tons of rice. Upon seeing the dilemma, the sage appeared to the king in his true-form, that of Lord Krishna and told the king that he did not have to pay the debt immediately but could pay him over time. The king would serve paal-payasam (pudding made of rice) in the temple freely to the pilgrims every day until the debt was paid off.”
The second difficult concept is “peak load.” This concept applies to organizations that must deal with a variable demand, such as electric power companies and hospitals. These organizations must maintain the capacity to meet the highest predictable demand, even though actual demand may be much lower most of the time. Electric power companies reach peak load in the summer, when air-conditioning increases demand. Hospitals have a similar issue with the flu season which predictably increases their “load” every winter.
But what happens when exponential growth meets peak load? Then the system is over-taxed and only drastic measures to reduce demand can help. Conservatives in the US and Brazil don’t seem to understand that any given level of infection is only a square on the board, a step toward a further multiplication. Failure to stop the process will inevitably lead to the breakdown of the system, so better to stop it early than late. Waiting for evidence that things are serious and out of control is fatal, literally.
Of course it is possible to operate a society without medical services, and that is in effect the situation of poor people in poor countries. But it will be difficult to convince the public in rich countries like the United States to accept such a miserable fate. The likely result is alternating between opening and closing until effective testing and tracing can get a handle on the situation. But that requires that people understand these two mathematical concepts and impose respect for them on political leaders. How many iterations will that take? I wish I knew!