That said, I don't think recognizing in late March that this virus spreads faster and is harder to control than previous similar ones was much of a leap of insi

That said, I don't think recognizing in late March that this virus spreads faster and is harder to control than previous similar ones was much of a leap of insight, and the article does seem a little too self-congratulatory over that. He made it amply clear to me that it wasn't much of a leap of insight, and the point of his original essay was to create proof that he knew that at the time. The fact that taking the action that he did resulted in a group of people who put together a compelling enough argument with good enough connections to get the New York Times to write about it DOES seem like it is worthwhile. As it turned out, having the New York Times asking whether the emperor had clothes caused lots of people in Japan to ask the right question which in turn caused the government to switch courses. The fact that this happened again underscores the point that, on publicly available data at that time, it didn't take an amazing leap of insight to understand that the Japanese story didn't add up.