3 ms·

That's absolutely nonsensical paranoia. It's the equivalent of making $1000 month one of your startup, $2000 month two, and immediately claiming that by month 2

That's absolutely nonsensical paranoia. It's the equivalent of making $1000 month one of your startup, $2000 month two, and immediately claiming that by month 24 you will be making over $16 billion. Make no mistake, COVID-19 is likely to become an annual community disease. But it's not going to kill 30 million people until like 2120.

DrJaws 7y ago
I'm not an epidemiologist, and while I do not like to use argument from authority, I trust this guys because is their work, they do it in top institutions and they won't jeopardize their reputation for some fear-mongering tweets. They can be wrong, but they are not going to lie.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  I know a guy who went to work as a post-doc at Harvard. He left behind experimental samples of human blood that were unlabelled, which I had to inform his former supervisor about. He also had a number of other professional failings. The takeaway is that just because someone has "Harvard" on their resume doesn't mean they are even remotely competent.
  - DrJaws 7y ago
    And I completely agree, that's why I said I don't like to use arguments of authority, but two of them are not educated in harvard, they are heads of departments and directors from harvard and john hopkins People educated in those fields with enough renown to claim those positions with a lot to lose for just writing that. And yes, while they can end being just wrong or spreading fearmongering information, they are the most trusted sources I found
- Fomite 7y ago
  I am an epidemiologist, and Marc Lipsitch knows his business.
  - DrJaws 7y ago
    would you change or add anything to what I wrote from what I understood about the covid situation?
    - Fomite 7y ago
      Besides my usual request not to follow Eric Feigl-Ding as an authoritative source? Not really? This is the currently understood state of the science. I would say though that right now several things have broken the "wrong" way in terms of optimistic projections, so it's still possible for the situation to improve.
refulgentis 7y ago
That is counter to nearly everything I've read from equally intelligent, cautious, subject matter experts over the past couple days.
- Fomite 7y ago
  There's been a lot of shifts in thinking recently, including by myself, as some things that were explicable via either the typically bad data from an emerging outbreak or "just so" stories about stochasticity, like the cruise ship cases, or the bulk of the cases in South Korea being due to a single massive spreading event in a fairly insular community, turned out to be...well...more common than would be desirable. The field, as a whole, has started talking much more about mitigation, and less about containment, because attempts to intensively trace and isolate cases are only partially holding the line. That being said, important caveats to all of this is: - As Marc Lipsitch notes, those estimates don't tell us how many of those cases will be asymptomatic or mild, because we don't have good numbers for that yet. The difference between "Under the weather for a few days" and "Needs respiratory support in an ICU" is obviously massive. - Epidemic models inherently assume exponential growth (because that's how epidemics work). But that does mean that small perturbations in how we understand how the disease "works" can dramatically chance projections.
bitreality 7y ago
There's nothing nonsensical about it. That's a very poor analogy as well, comparing a startup's growth to the spread of a highly-infectious virus. COVID19 spreads by default. If you leave it alone, it will spread uncontrollably. China went from 0 to 79,000 confirmed cases in 2 months, despite running the largest and most extensive quarantine in human history. If there was no quarantine, you could expect truly exponentially higher number of infections. The problem with these things is, if the rate of spread is >1, then it becomes exponential. That is, if the average person infects more than one person, then the rate of spread is going to get completely out of control. Unless of course, you can impose measures that reduce the rate of spread to below 1. With coronavirus, it's not possible to do this. The reason is that many people are asymptomatic for weeks, while at the same time passing the virus to other people. If you cannot identify infections before they have the chance to spread at a rate of >1, then the spread of the disease will by default be exponential. A startup does not grow exponentially by default. Many actions need to be done correctly to continue growing. A business's default state is death.
- mda 7y ago
  COVID19 spreads by default. If you leave it alone, it will spread uncontrollably. China went from 0 to 79,000 confirmed cases in 2 months, despite running the largest and most extensive quarantine in human history. Sure, but note that they started the strict quarantine protocol after there are already > ten thousand ick people (and many more already exposed). With coronavirus, it's not possible to do this. The reason is that many people are asymptomatic for weeks, while at the same time passing the virus to other people. If you cannot identify infections before they have the chance to spread at a rate of >1, then the spread of the disease will by default be exponentia This is mostly speculation, maybe just applying basic things like hand washing, distance measures pushes it to <1 and it dies down eventually? Besides, we have no data about the rate of infection from people who does not show any symptoms (especially coughing).

DrJaws 7y ago

I'm not an epidemiologist, and while I do not like to use argument from authority, I trust this guys because is their work, they do it in top institutions and they won't jeopardize their reputation for some fear-mongering tweets. They can be wrong, but they are not going to lie.

ImaCake 7y ago
I know a guy who went to work as a post-doc at Harvard. He left behind experimental samples of human blood that were unlabelled, which I had to inform his former supervisor about. He also had a number of other professional failings. The takeaway is that just because someone has "Harvard" on their resume doesn't mean they are even remotely competent.
- DrJaws 7y ago
  And I completely agree, that's why I said I don't like to use arguments of authority, but two of them are not educated in harvard, they are heads of departments and directors from harvard and john hopkins People educated in those fields with enough renown to claim those positions with a lot to lose for just writing that. And yes, while they can end being just wrong or spreading fearmongering information, they are the most trusted sources I found
Fomite 7y ago
I am an epidemiologist, and Marc Lipsitch knows his business.
- DrJaws 7y ago
  would you change or add anything to what I wrote from what I understood about the covid situation?
  - Fomite 7y ago
    Besides my usual request not to follow Eric Feigl-Ding as an authoritative source? Not really? This is the currently understood state of the science. I would say though that right now several things have broken the "wrong" way in terms of optimistic projections, so it's still possible for the situation to improve.

refulgentis 7y ago

That is counter to nearly everything I've read from equally intelligent, cautious, subject matter experts over the past couple days.

Fomite 7y ago
There's been a lot of shifts in thinking recently, including by myself, as some things that were explicable via either the typically bad data from an emerging outbreak or "just so" stories about stochasticity, like the cruise ship cases, or the bulk of the cases in South Korea being due to a single massive spreading event in a fairly insular community, turned out to be...well...more common than would be desirable. The field, as a whole, has started talking much more about mitigation, and less about containment, because attempts to intensively trace and isolate cases are only partially holding the line. That being said, important caveats to all of this is: - As Marc Lipsitch notes, those estimates don't tell us how many of those cases will be asymptomatic or mild, because we don't have good numbers for that yet. The difference between "Under the weather for a few days" and "Needs respiratory support in an ICU" is obviously massive. - Epidemic models inherently assume exponential growth (because that's how epidemics work). But that does mean that small perturbations in how we understand how the disease "works" can dramatically chance projections.

bitreality 7y ago

There's nothing nonsensical about it. That's a very poor analogy as well, comparing a startup's growth to the spread of a highly-infectious virus. COVID19 spreads by default. If you leave it alone, it will spread uncontrollably. China went from 0 to 79,000 confirmed cases in 2 months, despite running the largest and most extensive quarantine in human history. If there was no quarantine, you could expect truly exponentially higher number of infections. The problem with these things is, if the rate of spread is >1, then it becomes exponential. That is, if the average person infects more than one person, then the rate of spread is going to get completely out of control. Unless of course, you can impose measures that reduce the rate of spread to below 1. With coronavirus, it's not possible to do this. The reason is that many people are asymptomatic for weeks, while at the same time passing the virus to other people. If you cannot identify infections before they have the chance to spread at a rate of >1, then the spread of the disease will by default be exponential. A startup does not grow exponentially by default. Many actions need to be done correctly to continue growing. A business's default state is death.

mda 7y ago
COVID19 spreads by default. If you leave it alone, it will spread uncontrollably. China went from 0 to 79,000 confirmed cases in 2 months, despite running the largest and most extensive quarantine in human history. Sure, but note that they started the strict quarantine protocol after there are already > ten thousand ick people (and many more already exposed). With coronavirus, it's not possible to do this. The reason is that many people are asymptomatic for weeks, while at the same time passing the virus to other people. If you cannot identify infections before they have the chance to spread at a rate of >1, then the spread of the disease will by default be exponentia This is mostly speculation, maybe just applying basic things like hand washing, distance measures pushes it to <1 and it dies down eventually? Besides, we have no data about the rate of infection from people who does not show any symptoms (especially coughing).