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Illegal Drugs and Coronavirus

After my earlier five-part series I managed to go a month without writing anything new about coronavirus. That ends today. But since this blog is about second-order effects (and because part of me still needs a break from the topic) I’m not writing about coronavirus in a conventional way. Instead, I’m revisiting a topic I first covered a year and a half ago and looking at impact from COVID-19.

That topic: the changed market for illegal substances (rhino horn and cocaine for now) and how they flow around the world.

In the midst of all the global health concerns you might wonder why I would return to the topic of rhino horn and cocaine when I could also write about so many other issues. I returned to this topic because by looking at the systems behind these illegal trades we can understand other issues relevant for COVID-19. Continue reading “Illegal Drugs and Coronavirus”

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Changes in Value (Part 1)

When something changes in financial value quickly, unintended consequences abound. When this change happens at scale, affecting many people, the consequences are even more extreme. These changes impact supply and demand and social change around the world.

Let’s look at some examples of value change causing havoc. This week I’m intentionally (well, almost entirely) not writing about the topic you can’t escape.
Continue reading “Changes in Value (Part 1)”

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Changing Minds on Coronavirus

Long-time readers of this blog know that I wrote about how disease spreads several times well before the recent coronavirus news. And then I wrote three posts on that. I’m hardly alone in my interest on this topic.

But apart from what we’re going through now, infectious diseases generally don’t get as much attention as I think they deserve. In terms of unintended consequences, I’m interested in the impact of disease on human decision making and where things went wrong, or well, in the past. As for the potential impact of COVID-19 in the near-term, some minds are changing in the midst of political, business, social, and educational impact.

And then there is the look back in history. When I recently learned the story of a European plague year’s impact on Dutch “tulipmania,” the modern and historical protective images intrigued me as well.

Left: a protective white suit used when dealing with extreme infectious environments. Right: European plague doctor “Doctor Schnabel” (Dr. Beak). Doctors stuffed sweet smelling flowers and herbs into the mask’s beak to protect against noxious fumes believed to transmit disease. Also note the waxed coat, hat, and gloves.

Continue reading “Changing Minds on Coronavirus”

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Disinformation and Disease (Coronavirus Edition)

I’ve already written two earlier posts (one and two) on second-order effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Let’s now take the coronavirus situation to think through unintended consequences in a different way. For this post, I’m focusing on disinformation as related to the spread of disease.

What are some of the tactics used to spread disinformation, what are some cases of disease-related disinformation in history, and how will things possibly change over time and place?

What are some of the second-order effects coming from the different ways we communicate today, information’s ability to spread widely and cheaply, and even the surprising longevity of digital information?

And unlike many of the other posts on this site, is there more benefit from centralized best practices than in keeping different healthcare practices? Continue reading “Disinformation and Disease (Coronavirus Edition)”

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Coronavirus Consequences (Part 2)

While I tend not to write about current events, in the last article I introduced a set of worldwide consequences from the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus. We are still learning a lot about this disease, its origins and how it spreads. But with another week of information, here are additions to the consequences that may come from this disease and the reaction to it.

What scares some people about the novel coronavirus is not only the mortality rate of 2% to 3% — or 20 – 50 times that of the influenza in a typical year. Rather, it’s that the systems for spreading this coronavirus are different, that the animal origination of the disease is another sign that species crossover may become more common in the future, and that there are other technological changes that we may also see.

On species crossover, we have this quote from a NY Times opinion piece by David Quammen, titled We Made the Coronavirus Epidemic: Continue reading “Coronavirus Consequences (Part 2)”

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Coronavirus Consequences

As a rule, I don’t cover breaking news on this site. Plenty of other sources do that. Instead, when I do write about current events I focus on looking at the effects that systems have generating unintended consequences. That’s why I’m only writing about the Wuhan novel coronavirus now, almost at the end of the declared 14-day lockdown period.

And what a story of systems.

While the novel coronavirus fatality rate is estimated at 2.2% versus 9.6% for SARS, some other qualities of this outbreak may make the illness more difficult to contain, namely the long period of incubation (14 day estimate) and the increased amount of travel, including international and domestic Lunar New Year travel shortly before the lockdown period.

If you want an example of how times have changed since earlier epidemics, watch this video from the English publication of China’s People’s Daily. Continue reading “Coronavirus Consequences”

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Problems or Puzzles

On important matters, people often put more effort into figuring out the right decision. But the right decision is different depending on who puts in the effort. And what if right is defined as the option that won the experimental split test rather than what seems to be best for the overall system?

Part of product testing (and even product concept testing) depends on generating demand data by running variations in front of customers. Run lots of variations, find the ones that perform better based on the metrics you value, and repeat.

I recently read a description of large-scale product experimentation for a financial services company. The business’ product experimentation had direct financial outcomes — namely improved customer retention and customer lifetime value. But there were costs too. Continue reading “Problems or Puzzles”

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Autonomous Vehicles and Organ Donations

Recently I decided to look into the potential impact of autonomous vehicles on organ donation and found that this is a subject that many others have covered — even years ago. Surprisingly early in the history of AV development. Why this topic resulted in so many articles I don’t know. I’ve written about systemic risk and autonomous vehicles before but barely mentioned the potential impact on organ donation. However, after looking into the topic I came to the opposite conclusion of the other authors.

All the articles I found pointed to a coming shortfall of transplantable organs due to AV safety. However, I do not think that the impact will be big or even noticeable. Note that I am using a range of data I found about this, much of which seems noisy. If you have better sources or work in related industries, let me know if there are more accurate inputs that I should use.

(Note that this is different way than I usually write. In this article I’m not identifying an unintended consequence as much as I am saying that a stated one does not exist. And also note that this is a macabre subject.)

Continue reading “Autonomous Vehicles and Organ Donations”

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Should We Reevaluate the Precautionary Principle?

In March 2011 a 9.0 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami which led to the automatic shutdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan. While the reactor’s shutdown sequence started well, waves from the tsunami breached the nuclear plant’s seawall to flood and disable backup generators. Without the generators cooling the reactor’s nuclear core there was a meltdown and radioactive leakage. In this extreme series of events, what was the best way forward?

The Japanese government took action and required approximately 154,000 people to evacuate, the seemingly safe choice.

But was seemingly safe the right choice? Continue reading “Should We Reevaluate the Precautionary Principle?”