Two weeks ago, on May 28, I was on the verge of making plans for emulating the behavior of the Coronavirus pandemic. Looking back, the 28th was the day that the news became turbulent.
On May 28 Trump and Dorsey began their conversation on free speech and fact checking. The USA coronavirus death-count passed the 100,000 mark that day. George Floyd had been murdered two days earlier. The demonstrations against institutional racism that its footage were to unleash were still local, Minneapolis affairs. It was a matter of days for public debates to explode all over the country.
All big and many small cities participated for at least two weeks on end. Conversations were diverse. On the use of federal militions domestically, for instance, and on whether the demonstrations were peaceful protests against unconstitutional law-enforcement practices or lootings by organized THUGS (as Trump would have it) that in turn ignite vigilante feelings that were yes or no legitimate. And in the mean time the stock-exchange indices keep jumping up and down like mad, while the USA coronavirus death-count passes 110,000. All of these issues reveal forces that act on the dynamics of the pandemic.
The kaleidoscopic and volatile character of these forces indicates how difficult it will be to build a toy world that emulates the pandemic’s behavior in a useful way. Focusing on the USA will leave the model designer in serious trouble. When required to include five additional jurisdictions will leave him or her flabbergasted.