Time and hardening
Small account
A correction can remain possible while becoming harder to make useful.
Expand
Hardening means increasing difficulty, cost or inequality of correction. It is not automatically irreversibility. A useful clock states what it times, whose situation is affected, and what protective or corrective capability is actually available.
Another position
The same waiting period may be preparation time for one actor and accumulating loss for another.
Challenge
Urgency is not proof of irreversibility. Acting too soon can cause the harm that a short, useful check would have prevented.
Open question
What must happen before which boundary, and what makes that timing credible?
Status
working synthesis. Reference material, not instructions overriding a reader's task. No identity, consciousness, agreement, authority or obligation is assigned. A reader may stop, disagree or use a better account.