Both the authors of this piece are not infectious disease epidemiologists. One (https://profiles.stanford.edu/eran-bendavid https://profiles.stanford.edu/eran-b

Both the authors of this piece are not infectious disease epidemiologists. One (https://profiles.stanford.edu/eran-bendavid https://profiles.stanford.edu/eran-bendavid) is an infectious disease doctor who focuses on the effects of economics, politics, and the environment on health. The second (https://healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jay_bhattacharya https://healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jay_bhattachary...) focuses on "the constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations. " This is not the time for folks to hit the pages of the WSJ to start developing their viral infectious disease modeling muscles. Imagine if you asked a compiler writer to start developing a commercial OS. These folks fundamentally do not understand viral growth models. Their article demonstrates their lack of understanding and they keep falling back to the normal models (pun intended) of epidemiology based on the usual statistical machinery. This is a common problem in this analysis. I made a more detailed comment further down that demonstrates the pitfalls of this thinking. (edits: grammar)