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CORONAVIRUS_HALO
April 3, 2020
This is one you'd have to say I called wrong,
and I like to track things like this even if
there's no particular reason you should care.
When the COVID-19 story started to break, my
first impulse was to assume it was badly exaggerated.
I think there's a phenomena where everyone likes
to freak-out at the same time about the same thing,
and this struck me as a another problem that was
as much a social hallucination as it was real.
I went looking for some harder information, and
the death tolls seemed low compared to things that
people barely worry about, like influenza--
and that sounded like a familiar story: human
risk perception (like human perception of randomness
and uncertainty in general) seems horribly broken,
and it's not hard to find many examples where
the public worries tremendously about issues that My favorite
don't strike experts as that big a deal. remains the risks
of nuclear power.
It struck me as significant that offical
sources like the CDC hadn't announced a
fatality rate, but there were many unofficial
commentators rolling their own, dividing known
deaths by an estimated number of people
exposed to it, without recognizing how janky Early on, someone who
that second number is: early in a pandemic, gets sick and recovers
people underestimate how many people have been might attribute it to
exposed (and later they tend to over-esitmate) a cold or the flu.
which means these amateur death rates everyone Later, anyone who
was slinging around were almost certainly coughs assumes they've
(I figured) much too high. got The Plauge.
I found it particularly annoying that Trump
was claiming it was all more "fake news",
because it meant that my "skeptic" position
was totally contaminated in most people's I liked an early take by John
minds-- that is, "most people" among the Oliver, trying to talk down
people I actually talk to. the panic reaction (toilet
paper fights, gargling
bleach, etc) while making the
To my "credit" (talk about point that you should be
low bars) I'm not someone *somewhat* concerned.
who's ever gone against
following the official
recommendations of public
health departments, and But I did have my suspicions that some
as those came out I took of the official recommendations-- like
them seriously. hand-washing-- were more about giving
people something they could do.
(My guess was airborne
transmission was a
bigger deal.)
I was somewhat annoyed by some of
the posturing I was seeing on-line:
"some people just don't understand
exponential growth".
I do understand it, and one of the
things I understand is that nothing
ever stays on an exponential growth
curve, the question is always when are
we going to fall off it.
My informal guess was eventually, after
nearly everyone has been exposed, we'd Actually, there are
have enough naturally aquired immunity evidently still some
that the rapid growth phase would be questions about how well
over with. that process will work--
there's that now familiar
I figured weeks, now it's issue of viruses mutating,
looking more like months. and an issue I hadn't
heard about (but I would
guess is related) that
with some viruses immunity
I also hadn't heard about the need is effectively temporary,
to *slow* the growth to keep from so there's an issue about
over loading existing medical how *long* an exposed
facilities... and I never would've person will be safe from
predicted our current M95 mask re-infection.
shortage-- and the slow
progress in ramping up production
has been a definite surprise.
By the time we got to
California's announced
lock down, I'd come By the way, I've got what
around to "okay, this seems an unusual concern
is worse than I thought". about cornavirus fallout: Another
desperate
For the next ten years, bid for
I look forward to originality,
conserva-trolls treating no doubt.
this as the triumph of
suburbia. See, cities
really are dirty and
dangerous! What, you
want more public
transit, are you trying
to kill us?
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