The lead professor (Eran Bendavid) in charge of this study wrote an op-ed a month ago in the WSJ (with another contributor Jay Bhattacharya to this paper) about

The lead professor (Eran Bendavid) in charge of this study wrote an op-ed a month ago in the WSJ (with another contributor Jay Bhattacharya to this paper) about how we shouldn't shut down over coronavirus: https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464 https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as... I would be very surprised if they weren't aware of what they were doing by releasing their pre-print.