
Seattle’s leaders let scientists take the lead, New York’s did not - prostoalex
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leaders-let-scientists-take-the-lead-new-yorks-did-not
======
enitihas
I read this article long back and it really resonated with me
[https://threader.app/thread/1218724150312751104](https://threader.app/thread/1218724150312751104)
. It explains why people solving problems proactively before they become huge
issues get much less credit than people doing it reactively when the problem
has become much worse and putting heroic efforts.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
It's pretty much the same thing as the classic hero problem solver and it's in
computer programming too. The person who does a good design, tests, finds bugs
... doesn't get as much credit as the person who puts in Herculean efforts at
the last moment to save the day.

~~~
scottLobster
Yeah, I'd argue the issue is largely one of awareness. There simply aren't
good established mechanisms for even competent managers to notice the people
preventing a problem. The manager only has so much mental bandwidth, and part
of being a good subordinate is not consuming too much of that. There's an
ideal of "the team runs itself" with the manager only providing overall
direction/resources/big picture stuff.

While this can be great for team execution, by definition it insulates
managers from the nitty-gritty of design/development, which is where most of
the preventative measures happen. However if you try to remedy this and bring
the manager into the fold, you invite micromanaging and harm execution, as
well as preventing the manager from doing more managerial things.

It's when things go wrong and heroes emerge that people get raises and
promotions, if simply because the manager can point to those highly visible
efforts as rationale for why this person gets more. Also in large orgs a
manager might not know all their direct reports personally so those incidents
make the person stick out, like how a professor knows the kids who sit at the
front of the class the best.

I suppose the ideal would be a technically experienced manager who understands
how to promote good design practices and lets his team do so, but on sheer
educated faith with no metrics. Given that metrics are the lifeblood of large-
org management careers, the incentive structure isn't there to produce such
people en-masse.

~~~
xiphias2
I'm not sure if micromanagement is that bad for the final product, as long as
the manager has deep technical expertise and respects the people who he
micromanages.

Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are famous/notorius micromanagers (though they have
some problems with the ,,respect'' part). At the same time as they understand
the problems with the product development deeper, they are able to plan more
iterations ahead.

One example is the autopilot hardware. About 10-12 years ago I was working at
Google, sitting in a self driving car in Mountain View when it was a secret
project. I was already at that time amazed that the car could do some
offroading tricks that I wasn't capable of, and I was quite certain that
within 5 years it would be self driving without safety driver.

Now it's 2020, and it seems to me that in no more than 10 years Tesla will win
the autonomous race, as Elon understood that the computer needs lots of deep
learning instructions (more than what NVIDIA could provide) and HD maps and
lidars are not just unnecesary, but they are the wrong direction, as the
visual sensing problem needs to be solved for safe self driving.

In Google there are so many product managers at this point, that they
themselves are actively hindering the product development itself, as they
don't want to get into the details of the real problems.

------
jniedrauer
The social engineering aspect of pandemic control is fascinating and something
I had never considered before. It's not enough to put the right policies in
place. You have to get people to actually follow them (voluntarily). It's like
writing a user story on a grand scale.

~~~
thomascgalvin
There are basically three groups of people now: those who are taking this
seriously and social distancing, those who think this is some kind of hoax and
are gleefully ignoring any advice or orders from the government, and those
that are "essential" and have no choice in the matter.

The hoaxers are a clear and present threat to the essential workers. The
number of MBTA staff infected with COVID-19 has more than doubled in the past
week; they _can 't_ avoid people, and they're being infected by those who _won
't_.

~~~
listenallyall
Vast simplification that undermines working-class people. Tens of millions of
people have lost their job and income, while bills continue to accumulate.
It's fair to acknowledge the potential risks of contracting COVID-19, and
still decide, I'd prefer to work, observing sanitization & social distancing
measures, than to have my entire financial life ruined.

We just had the NFL draft this week. Plenty of these players will have their
bodies seriously harmed in the next few years, while others will get multiple
concussions and potentially set themselves up for CTE or other brain damage.
Not once did anyone raise any alarms about, maybe these young people shouldn't
go into this line of work...

~~~
pgsbathhouse2
>than to have my entire financial life ruined.

You know we can just literally choose to not have this problem, instead of
buying into other people's narratives.

>Not once did anyone raise any alarms about, maybe these young people
shouldn't go into this line of work

Actually plenty of people do. It's just not a very thrilling subject to the
U.S. populace.

~~~
ddxxdd
>You know we can just literally choose to not have this problem, instead of
buying into other people's narratives.

Try saying this after a few months of lockdown, when a severely damaged
economy leads to food shortages, and printing money does nothing to help.

~~~
dlp211
There is no evidence that we are headed toward food shortages. We actually
have surpluses. The issue now and in the future is one of alignment and market
forces.

~~~
ddxxdd
The economy cannot be modelled as a linear system; it is a pseudo-chaotic
system.

If one poorly-chosen element is labelled as a "non-essential business", it can
cause all the other metaphorical Jenga blocks to collapse.

------
wishdev
The revisionist history attempts by the "scientists" in Seattle are
staggering.

On Feb 26th, every single level of the Seattle "scientific" community laughed
at Ms. Reid, the Superintendent of the Northshore School District when she
closed Bothell High School over a potent positive case of a staff member that
travelled overseas. She wanted to make sure her students were safe and the
building was disinfected.

The "scientific" King County Deptartment of Health went as far as to
specifcally send out a document stating that closure was unwarranted - they
did not just sit there and let her do her job - they went out of their way to
ensure the public was informed they thought she was nuts.

You do not get to do that and then claim to be the greatest organization of
all time 2 days later.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I have a different understanding. Before there was evidence, the health depts
were not pushing things. The article goes over that. As soon as they got
evidence (that's what those pesky scientists like, darn them), then they
started doing what this article says.

One of the earliest public things I'm aware of this posting from a scientist
in Seattle on Feb 29th, by researcher Trevor Bedford, part of the Seattle Flu
Study about covid-19 tracing genetically. They were testing flu samples for
covid-19 (the govt refused permission for them to do that but eventually they
just did it, because it was so important).
[https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1233970271318503426](https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1233970271318503426)

~~~
wishdev
Sorry - this is the original letter that went out on Feb 26th -
[https://www.nsd.org/blog/~board/superintendent-
blog/post/let...](https://www.nsd.org/blog/~board/superintendent-
blog/post/letter-to-families-bothell-high-school-closure)

3rd paragraph is the grovelling the school district needed to do to deal with
the interference of the King County Health Department.

There is also the "red dawn" emails which clearly show that King County was
not doing a single thing in the face of knowing it was a problem - Dr. Duchin
(King County Health) on March 1st - not 4 days after this public rebuke of the
school idstrict.

"We are having a very serious challenge related to hospital exposures and
impact on the healthcare system. Would be great to have a call to discuss.
Will be meeting with your team here this morning and then maybe we can chat
after that"

So it goes from laughing to all hell breaking loose to doing nothing for
almost 2 more weeks? That's the Health Department leading the way?

------
daxfohl
I'd love to agree with this article, but I don't think it holds much water.

* Washington schools closed very late. My friends' schools in Indianapolis had already been closed a week.

* Barely any of the volunteer WFH was taken, at least among my group at Microsoft. Maybe 10% participation.

* Volunteer child removal from school was spotty, maybe 25%, not enough to make a huge difference.

While I like most of how our governor has managed it, and I like science, I
have a hard time saying that it's more than marginally responsible for the NYC
- SEA disparity. In fact as the article alludes, many of the decisions were
driven by factors beyond the need to minimize covid deaths, like providing
school lunches for families who couldn't afford them. So coming to the
conclusion that these decisions are responsible for the disparity is
disingenuous.

All the other points in the article, including luck, carry a lot more weight.
NYC is the city that never sleeps. SEA is the city where if one person is
Sleepless then they make a bestselling movie about it....

The other things really that might make a difference, that few have mentioned
is that

* The first hit of the virus was ripping through a life care center. That put people naturally on edge.

* Knicks and Nets both had long homestands during the beginning of the outbreak, whereas let's just say the Sonics have been on a rather long road trip.

~~~
kixiQu
Seattle public schools closed before the whole state, which is what you would
expect.

I think if the experts of evaluating these policies are saying that putting
them in place without delay saved lives, it's probably unwise for all us
armchair epidemiologists to sit around coming up with other things we think
might explain it.

------
phasnox
How many flights does NYC receive per day?

How many does Seattle receive?

The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or
didn't.

Same thing with Europe. The most affected countries are the most visited ones.
Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns.

~~~
bb2018
I agree. de Blasio did terrible and Inslee acted way faster than Cuomo, but
there is a reason that Buffalo is much better off than NYC even though they
are both under the jurisdiction of New York law. Anyone who has lived in NYC
as well as other cities knows just how different it is.

My family is in New England. Massachusetts has 10x more deaths per capita than
New Hampshire even though, if anything, Massachusetts has been a bit ahead in
terms of closures and interventions.

~~~
downerending
> Anyone who has lived in NYC [...] knows just how different it is.

No one who's been to NYC can miss the fact that it's one of the filthiest
places in America, from the perspective of disease possibilities. Many parts
simply pile their trash on the curb and there are rats are everywhere. People
pack into subway cars like sardines, and there's no way to avoid droplet
transmission. During my time there, I saw several people vomit in public and
just walk off.

There are plenty of great things about the city, but lacking a real culture of
cleanliness (e.g., Tokyo), density breeds disease.

~~~
crazygringo
Filthiness, trash and rats have _zero_ to do with coronavirus.

COVID-19 is spread principally by breathing, which is unaffected by
cleanliness.

And if you think people are packed into subway cars in New York... have you
_been_ to Tokyo?

I'm not saying New York is a paragon of cleanliness, but you will have to show
some scientific evidence that curbside trash pickup or the occasional subway
rat has anything to do with the prevalence of modern-day diseases. Because
they simply do not as common knowledge suggests.

Modern diseases like colds and flus are spread through close contact in
schools, office buildings and subways the exact same as they are every other
major city on the planet.

~~~
areyousure
> COVID-19 is spread principally by breathing, which is unaffected by
> cleanliness.

Masks?

> I'm not saying New York is a paragon of cleanliness, but you will have to
> show some scientific evidence that curbside trash pickup or the occasional
> subway rat has anything to do with the prevalence of modern-day diseases.
> Because they simply do not as common knowledge suggests.

Initial reading:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rats_in_New_York_City#Disease,...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rats_in_New_York_City#Disease,_allergies,_asthma_and_damage)

Diseases carried by NYC rats:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25316698](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25316698)

Hong Kong and literal SARS:
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12932393/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12932393/)

"Urban Norway and black rats (Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus) are the
source of a number of pathogens responsible for significant human morbidity
and mortality in cities around the world.":
[https://doi.org/10.1089/vbz.2012.1195](https://doi.org/10.1089/vbz.2012.1195)

~~~
crazygringo
Key quote: _" it is unclear how infectious the rats are to residents"_.

Yes, we all know rats can carry disease, and that this has been a historical
problem (e.g. the Black Death).

But it's not like coming into physical contact with a rat, or even their
droppings or anything, is a common occurrence in NYC.

In 10 years living in New York City, I've seen a rat maybe 50 times total?
Every single one was on the subway tracks (i.e. inaccessible), except exactly
_once_ I saw one at the end of the deserted platform, but far away from
people.

Now I'm sure there are rats elsewhere, I'm just a single data point.

But nevertheless, to put it simply, getting diseases from rats is not a known
public health problem in New York City. You _cannot_ extrapolate a risk here
simply from the _presence_ of rats.

~~~
downerending
If you'd like to see a rat (as in rats), go to one of the city parks on trash
day. The cans get emptied 24-48 hours before the trucks pick them up. Go there
in the evening and sit maybe 30 meters from the trash heap. Watch carefully.
Extra credit: Toss them french fries.

If you're up for a more disturbing experience, go sit on those benches at the
south end of Riverside Park--the ones next to the ivy or whatever. Listen for
the squeaking. Guess what? Those are rats. Lots and lots of rats, like in
_Jurassic Park_ or something.

------
dekhn
In a few years, not now, we'll be able to look back and say with some
confidence which actions saved lives (and didn't have an equivalently large
negative effect on the economy). It does seem likely that, in areas with dense
populations like cities, rapid early isolation made a significant difference
in the overall impact on the care system. It is still entirely unclear what
the longer term outcomes will be, since we can't all isolate indefinitely, so
presumably, everybody will get infected eventually.

~~~
maxerickson
We won't have the economic counterfactuals really.

At some point, people would have got the idea about reducing contacts for
themselves, but say that didn't happen in New York until 2 or 3 or 4 times as
many people were infected. Not a ridiculous scenario, and who knows what the
economic situation would be.

------
untog
As a New Yorker it's been eye opening to see the extent of the Cuomo worship
nation (world?!) wide during the COVID outbreak. The view of Cuomo from many
in the city was quite negative before, and I've been waiting to see how long
it'll be before perceptions snap back to reality. Stories like this feel like
the start of that, and there will be much more to come.

~~~
MiroF
I find it particularly odd given that the reason Cuomo is in the spotlight is
because his state has done so so poorly, even compared to areas with similar
density.

~~~
airstrike
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any area in the US has "similar
density" to NYC

~~~
spking
Basically, yes (technically it's #6):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density)

~~~
hsitz
Yeah, but the truth is in what you don't say. The top 8 density areas were all
NYC metro area, all of them small small population cities (<70k) except for
NYC at #6 with over 8,000,000 population!

------
AzzieElbab
NYC, to put it bluntly is a country of its own. It requires a completely
different calibre of management in the City Hall. Definitely not what they
have right now

------
grej
I think this kind of retrospective look at these two datapoints is probably
not focused on the right thing at this point.

This article picks on DeBlasio / Cuomo and indirectly DeBlasio’s health
commissioner heavily for encouraging continued going out to restaurants and
events and riding the subway in late Feb and into mid-March. But remember in
late Feb the President was still saying it was going to just magically go
away. Bay Area politicians including the speaker of the house Pelosi were
encouraging lots of people to come to Chinatown parades. Florida even left
their beaches open all the way through mid March for spring breakers to come.
While those events have almost certainly led to additional cases and deaths,
other areas of the country seem to have largely gotten away with a less
proactive and later response than Seattle.

I think we are probably going to see that the real challenge on NY is that we
just don’t have another city in the US with New York’s density, air travel
volume, and high utilization of public transit. Comparing NY to Seattle just
because they are both in the US is probably not as relevant. Given what we
know now about the propensity of high volume super spreader events to drive
the bulk of the R0, NY can probably only really fairly be compared to London
and Paris in the Western world, at least.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
No, I'm sorry, you're missing the point of the article. One of those places
had politicians using more economic and political considerations leading to
their choices. Seattle has those forces but generally acceded to the guidance
of scientists.

------
yters
To be a truly scientific study, we need to look at more than two instances of
scientists leading and not leading.

~~~
notatoad
anecdotes are really the only way to know whether or not science can be
trusted.

(/s)

------
jfnixon
Ah, letting scientists take the lead would explain why WA State shut down the
Seattle Flu Study's efforts to pivot to investigate Covid-19.

[https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/seattle-flu-study-
alle...](https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/seattle-flu-study-allegedly-
tested-samples-for-covid-19-against-federal-state-guidelines)

------
irrational
I see some states saying that they want to reopen by a certain day. I
appreciate my governor’s proclamation that she’s not going to give a date but
the lock down will continue until she says so. That seems a lot more logical
than setting a arbitrary date in the future and either disappointing people
when it turns out to not be realistic or going for it anyway and creating a
massive health crisis.

------
carapace
> One of the E.I.S.’s core principles is that a pandemic is a communications
> emergency as much as a medical crisis.

------
kerng
I think that many large corporations announced March 6th, that their workforce
stay home until at least end of month helped raise awareness throughout the
Seattle area, and made people become a lot more conscious.

The government did not act as fast on the West Coast either.

------
sigzero
Virginia isn't doing it either. Northam (a doctor) doesn't have a clue as to
what he is doing.

------
throwawaysea
This is a rosy take to fit the narrative, although the article is correct that
New York made some big mistakes. Seattle leaders have also taken missteps. For
example they closed all the parks on Easter weekend, an unnecessarily drastic
step that probably just resulted in people grouping elsewhere in smaller, more
crowded spaces. The parking lots at most parks remain closed, making it much
harder for people needing a mental break to deal with all this. More broadly,
Washington state also has restrictions other states don’t - for instance
fishing is banned, which makes no sense given that it is a pastime that
naturally requires distancing. Same with golfing. Private construction is
banned but public construction is not. State parks and national forest lands
are closed, despite most being desolate and full of space. Cycling and jogging
on Seattle’s popular citywide trails however, are not banned, despite it being
a much more likely vector for spreading via aerosol particles (note, some
other areas like France have banned cycling for this reason).

There is an inconsistency and inequality in how these restrictions were
selected. The arbitrary nature makes me think it is simply was what was
politically expedient, rather some principled design. As for an example of
political expediency, right now the city’s socialist council is trying to pass
an “Amazon tax” under the auspices of the mayor’s emergency proclamation,
which due to a technicality would make it immune to subsequent referendum even
after the emergency expires ([https://sccinsight.com/2020/04/08/the-amazon-
tax-bill-is-des...](https://sccinsight.com/2020/04/08/the-amazon-tax-bill-is-
designed-to-be-immune-to-referendum/)).

If Seattle or Washington were truly responsible, they should’ve shut port
traffic (at airports) early and aggressively. Even if that wouldn’t have
stopped the coronavirus from arriving ultimately, it would have at least
delayed it and provided more time to prepare. I think they should also have
taken steps to make their shelter orders more nuanced, rather than the blunt
weapon one size fits all approach.

~~~
plandis
I live near Green Lake in Seattle and in my experience on nice days Green Lake
is so crowded that people are certainly not 6ft apart consistently.

I also do a lot of hiking and on nice days the popular (and most accessible)
trails are utterly packed with people. There would be no way you would be able
to consistently stay 6ft apart.

~~~
throwawaysea
Green Lake would be less crowded if those near living there could go to other
parks that normally are far less crowded than Green Lake. However those other
parks had their parking lots closed by the city, which means locals near you
have no choice but to crowd into the running trails around Green Lake.

On the trails - I think we could easily force them to operate at half density
by closing half the lot at popular trailheads. People would spread out to
other locations as a result.

Even so, you don’t have to be 6 feet apart all the time. The WHO’s guidance is
only 3 feet, for one. But you also get a benefit from just MOSTLY reducing
contact, and even on crowded trails people aren’t on top of each other except
at the destination. With mask requirements the risk is likely low.

------
DenisM
[...] For three days, dozens of that man’s family members had sat at his
bedside in the hospital [...] The next day, the man with all the family
visitors died. [...]

So I am not easily impressed, but this freaked me out for a second. Just to be
clear - one man had died on that day, not dozens of people. Sheesh.

I suppose there's some valuable comma somewhere in that sentence, or absence
thereof, that should have kept me on the even keel? Or did they just did that
on purpose?

I would have written it off as just another error, but I am having hard time
accepting that _The New Yorker_ would let that slip through by accident.

~~~
uranusjr
Asking as a non-native speaker, how would you write this sentence instead? I
tried but cannot produce any syntactically correct alternative better than
this.

~~~
mlyle
The man, who had had all the visitors, died.

The frequently-visited man died.

The day after he'd had all the visitors, he died.

~~~
DenisM
> The man, who had had all the visitors, died.

I think that's just it. I'd add the word "family" in there, to make the
connection stronger:

The man, who had had all the family visitors, died.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I think it’s a good thing that the states have taken different approaches at
solving the problem. This is how we experiment and improve on the system. You
can’t make innovation without experimentation.

If the federal government rolled in with a heavy hand, we’re all stuck with
whatever they think is best. The governors should be the ones that decide for
their state, and the federal government should support that in whatever way
possible.

The same is said for countries. When the dust settles we can examine the data
and see what really worked and what made things worse. This is how we become
stronger.

~~~
untog
> Tom Frieden, the former C.D.C. director, has estimated that, if New York had
> started implementing stay-at-home orders ten days earlier than it did, it
> might have reduced COVID-19 deaths by fifty to eighty per cent.

Obviously that's one person's view, but if it's true that means somewhere
between 5,550 and 8,800 people have died needlessly. Innovation is good, but
not at any cost.

~~~
swimfar
You're assuming that if all states had taken the same approach, they would
have all taken the best approach. You're correct that one hypothetical outcome
is that 5500-8800 more people died. However, another outcome is that the
entire nation could have responded in a way similar to New York in which case
there would have been many more deaths.

~~~
untog
> You're assuming that if all states had taken the same approach, they would
> have all taken the best approach.

I'm really not. It makes sense that different states should try different
things, and I imagine that if all politicians listened to the scientists there
would have been different answers proposed for different states.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
This isn't just playing around with abstract new things that we have no
experience with in public health. The same situation is happening in Sweden's
"experiment" as compared to other countries with similar health systems in
Europe. Sweden is expected to have about 10,000 deaths and they should have
about 2,000 deaths if their health system works about as well as Switzerland.
See
[https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden](https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden).
For reference Sweden has about 10 mil pop, Switzerland has 8.5 mil. Sweden is
expected to kill about 8,000 people unnecessarily. We know this can happen
because of experience with many previous epidemics.

------
mschuster91
Under normal conditions, people should follow the scientists _without_
requiring orders from politicians out of their own common sense and could
differ between quackery and actual science - instead we have 100 people
calling the Maryland covid19 hotline about injecting disinfectant and 30 ppl
in NYC actually consuming disinfectant.

What happened instead is the result of decades of underfunding in the
educational system colliding with years of trust in media being undermined
(most obviously with the current Presidency, but mis-information was a thing
before his campaign), trust in politicians generally being eroded for decades
(gridlocked Congress, Iraq WMD lie) and decades of underfunding of social
security nets - _of course_ it is a hard decision to close schools when
literally tens of thousands of kids rely on them for basic needs such as food
and clothes washing!

The crisis is entirely on the last decades of inaction and underfunding. And
not only in the USA (where it is the worst) but also in other parts of the
world. I _hope_ that the world at least learns from all the needless death...

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
This just seems like an ahistorical summary. Lots of people were following the
science without requiring orders. Until mid-March, most American politicians
were trying to get people to _stop_ being cautious, because their caution was
bad for business.

