Ukraine's COVID-19 Disaster

Consistent punishment with intermittent rewards

The general problem with bending norms of logic and evidence for a special occasion is that they stay bent. And whoever was granted leniency on logic and evidence comes back afterwards with nuttier theories, demanding you take them seriously like you did the first time around.

It’s day whatever of Ukraine’s COVID-19 disaster and the 7-day average of new cases registered illustrates clearly that something has gone very wrong in efforts to mitigate the spread of the disease. We should not find this surprising, because the country’s top officials have been making batshit pronouncements about their efforts to contain the virus since January.

Positive dynamics of morbidity over the last 90 days have been driven by pathological bad thinking, whacko algorithms, formulations of set theory without variables, kooky mitigation models for flattening the curve, magical epidemic thinking, irredeemable health officials, pandemic politics and false assumptions promulgated by poorly calibrated agents …