Disrupting a Feedback Loop

The world recently came face-to-face with a growing feedback loop. The novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, shook the world. It erupted and spread in a manner not seen in over a hundred years.

It forced a completely new way to go through daily life. It caused such major change that it can be difficult to see the systematic elements at play.

Systematic Response to COVID-19

In the U.S. the media did a great job addressing the underlying systems. There were charts, modeling, simulations and explanation.

Public Health professionals worked to explain the systematic aspect of a pandemic. They made it clear that we have to take specific steps to combat the acceleration of the feedback loop.

COVID-19 Feedback Loops

For those of us in the world of systems thinking, we immediately spot the feedback loops. We see that for every infected person, they infect multiple people. Those “multiple people” infect numerous others. As it grows, it becomes more widespread. This is a classic feedback loop. It is an accelerating feedback loop holding the potential for deadly outcomes.

There is time between onset and symptoms making it challenging to isolate the sick individuals from the population. This presents a feedback loop with a delay. These types of feedback loops can be especially tricky because we can’t tie the cause to the outcome due to the time between the two. The delay in the feedback loop means you have to tackle it differently.

The tactic that was used was to separate individuals. By isolating everyone as much as possible, we can reduce the spread. This modified the feedback loop. Instead of the output going back into the input and continuing to magnify, we were able to reduce the amount of input back into the system.

Ties to Other Feedback Loops

In the article, Everything is not equal in a feedback loop, I explored the various elements of a feedback loop. Then I used audio feedback as an example.

One technique that I highlight to reduce a feedback loop was to decrease the strength of a negative feedback loop. In the article I explain, “If we want to reduce a negative feedback loop, we can put more space between the output and the input. If we find that we have a negative feedback loop we can use it to help reduce the impact of the loop.”

If we have a microphone feeding back, we can move the mic away from the speakers. This creates enough space to reduce the feedback. In the fight against COVID-19, social distancing creates space between people. This reduces the rate at which it spreads by making it less likely to infect others.

One tactic for reducing audio feedback that I address in the article attacks only the offending frequencies that are squealing. Because the microphone feedback is only a few offending frequencies, we can reduce those while leaving the overall volume the same.

This mimics the original tactics of isolating only those who are sick and have the potential to be infected (such as the travel bans, or using temperature checks).

Tackling a Feedback Loop

Seeing the public health leaders approach makes sense when we see it as a feedback loop that we are trying to reduce. They initially started by trying to isolate those that are ill. This is similar to an audio engineer using an equalizer to pull out specific frequencies so the squeal goes away.

But what would happen if there was a delay between when the squeal started and when it hit the speakers for us to hear it? To make it even more complicated, what would happen if that frequency changed randomly? It would become impossible to use an equalizer to single out the offending frequencies before they fed back.

Public health professionals experienced this exact system template. So, they moved to the next level of tactics. They created space between people to reduce the amount of spread. They closed businesses. They cancelled events with many people together. They called for social distancing.

Repercussions When Trying to Reduce Feedback

This would be similar to the audio engineer lowering the overall volume coming out of the speakers. In audio there are repercussions for doing this. The band might not be able to hear themselves enough to perform. The audience might not hear the singer enough.

In a pandemic there are repercussions as well. Isolating everyone means reduced economic activity. It means that some people will not be able to carry on and bring in enough money to pay their bills.

Economic Feedback Loop

This creates a whole new economic feedback loop. When individuals don’t make enough money to pay their rent, the landlord loses that income. But they still owe money to the bank for that property. When they can’t pay the bank, the bank loses that income. They were counting on that money coming in and this creates an economic hardship for the bank.

When the banks receive reduced income, this can create a whole new set of feedback loops. This type of feedback loop caused the 2008 financial crisis. When people couldn’t pay their mortgage, they defaulted on the loan. The bank took ownership of the property, but the value of the property dropped.

As this happened over and over and over with many individuals it spiraled into a situation where there were more properties available and not enough people buying those properties. To sell one’s house, they would reduce the price. But when everyone starts reducing their price to sell, it creates a market that systematically reduces the value of everyone’s property.

When that happens, individuals with loans on the house had a decision to make. In some instances they owed more on the mortgage than the house is worth. Should they pay off the mortgage of $300,000 to own a property worth $250,000?

Gaining Control of Out-of-Control Feedback Loops

As you can probably see, these feedback loops can quickly get out of control. They seem to develop a mind of their own. They get more and more powerful. They impact all of us in great ways.

But we can all learn from these feedback loops. Many of the principles of feedback loops remain the same. The details may vary, but the structures are pretty similar. If we want to gain control of a feedback loop, we can look at other feedback loops. We can note what works and what doesn’t. Then we can apply the same concepts to better handle life’s uncertainty and the propensity to create out-of-control feedback loops all around us.