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It is true.
People struggle with exponential growth.
Most of them lack practical experience in everyday life with developments that multiply over time.
It is therefore difficult to imagine how quickly the number of cases of infections will rise.
For example, what it means when they double in a month.
What begins harmlessly with 1,000 infected people at the beginning of January affects 4,000 in February 2000, 4,000 in March and 8,000 in April.
It goes on like this - month after month.
Those who enjoy mathematics can easily calculate by hand that the number of cases will exceed the one million mark in November and the two million mark at the end of the year.
In the middle of spring of the following year after 16.3 months (around May 10), 82 million infected people would be reported, which roughly corresponds to the resident population in Germany.
That is how fast the dynamic of exponential growth is - in theory.
People usually have common minds to help them weigh up
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In practice it looks a little different, which also provides a reason why people have so little everyday experience with exponential growth.
Because in everyday life, something often slows down an unbridled dynamic.
This is particularly true when the consequences of unhindered expansion are assessed as seriously negative by a population.
Then people take countermeasures.
They change their behavior.
They protect themselves, take precautions, wash their hands, keep their distance, wear masks, ventilate the rooms and get vaccinated.
An interim result can already be recorded here: the adaptation reactions are likely to be more intense, the undesirably the consequential damage of exponential developments is classified.
Or to put it another way: people usually have a very healthy mind, which helps them to weigh up when they can let things go and when they have to react - quickly and radically if necessary.
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The avoidance activities force a constant correction of the theoretical calculations of how infection numbers develop.
However, many of the forecast models for the course of the pandemic suffer from the fact that they either do not take the changes in behavior into account.
Or that they grossly underestimate how quickly people react and, above all, are ready to react when they have understood and accept that something should be done so that exponential dangers can be slowed down or even broken and stopped.
This is precisely why the history of mankind has been such a success story up to now.
The ability of societies to adapt and adopt, denoted by the buzzword “resilience”, has made it possible for more people to live better, longer and healthier lives than ever before - despite all wars, disasters and crises.
While Germany is in lockdown, neighboring countries are already opening
While Germany remains in a hard lockdown with an incidence of around 160, many neighboring countries are at least gradually returning to normal.
And that although the numbers are significantly higher there.
Source: WORLD
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Adaptation responses, however, are not available for free.
They are fraught with consequences.
This raises a number of questions.
Who should do what, when, where and how?
Most of the answers cannot be answered in terms of objective and absolute criteria.
Rather, they are associated with value judgments.
However, they vary from person to person depending on how they are affected - sometimes dramatically.
What is a no-go for some is a matter of course for others.
It is obvious that there standard solutions do not do justice to the diversity of needs and necessities.
But who decides which balance is the right one - especially when it comes to life or death?
To draw an interim conclusion here too: There is no behavior without risks.
Anyone who argues with a "no covid" strategy provokes illusions of a "no risk" policy that is not to be had in reality.
That is why even the most well-intentioned fight against the coronavirus does not justify every means.
The consequences of a lockdown also endanger human life.
The probability is high that further tightening of the procedure will result in even more victims elsewhere.
The calculation rule is: The sum of all risks is to be minimized, not just a single risk.
So both the direct consequences of infection and the indirect consequences of a lockdown on all areas of society and the economy are decisive.
But that has to do with weighing up, which means nothing other than looking for an “optimum”.
This shows that people do not only have their difficulties with exponential developments.
Their problems with optimization processes are even greater.
This also has something to do with mathematics lessons in German grammar schools.
How to calculate maxima or minima is part of the basic knowledge for the Abitur in many places.
With the help of comparatively simple considerations (called “curve discussion” in mathematical jargon), extreme values can be determined “according to scheme X” - when something is going best or worst.
So how, for example, the number of infections can be minimized or the effects of a lockdown can be maximized.
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Optimization tasks, however, are much more complex.
What a Lagrange multiplier is, many students still have to google or look up Wikipedia (it is a mathematical process to determine optimal solutions).
Because this is not just about a single issue, but always about several that need to be taken into account at the same time.
So not just action, but also reaction;
not only direct consequences here, but also indirect side effects elsewhere.
That makes the whole thing difficult and confusing;
multi-dimensional instead of one-dimensional.
Those who rely on lockdowns tend to think in (simple, but well-known) extreme values than in (difficult and also unknown) optimization processes.
Incidence values are at the center of all decisions.
It is important to minimize it or at least to keep it below it.
The reality, however, is more complex.
Extreme values can only provide orientation aid in absolute emergency situations and only for a very short period of time - as happened a year ago when the pandemic broke out.
Because they violate the knowledge that people assess the consequences of dangers - no matter how dramatic - differently.
That is why sustainable politics always means the difficult search for optima and not simply for maxima or minima.
It is the compromise that is to be sought politically, not the extreme.
It is not one-eyedness that is required, but complexity
Lockdowns are no help for a long-term sustainable policy.
They limit the weighing up.
You breathe the spirit of centralized, one-size-fits-all solutions regardless of the loss of specific on-site solutions.
They tend to treat dissimilarities equally.
That may be politically practical.
Socially it is likely to be perceived as unacceptable.
Anyone who has to cope with complex issues must not make things easy for themselves and rely on general lockdowns.
It is not one-eyedness that is required, but complexity.
No politically sustainable path can avoid solving an optimization problem.
It is not just about geographical differentiation according to districts.
Rather, a distinction must be made between individual people.
The more you know about the coronavirus and its risks and the more people are vaccinated, the more it is necessary to weigh up, differentiate and treat unequal conditions differently.
Optimization makes political processes more difficult.
But it ensures more social acceptance than uncompromising governance.
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Thomas Straubhaar is professor of economics, especially international economic relations, at the University of Hamburg.
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