It's not too harsh. It seems pretty clear to me the blasé conclusion that essentially "things are gonna get much worse in a month" (no duh) was loosely backfill

It's not too harsh. It seems pretty clear to me the blasé conclusion that essentially "things are gonna get much worse in a month" (no duh) was loosely backfilled with numbers after the conclusion was already made. Writing in a circuitous manner may have been necessary due to the author's immigration status but it's also a very convenient smokescreen that makes his group's results look more dramatic. For example, the timeline for March 24th, the day before this epic whitepaper was released: "a sporting event is postponed." This "sporting event" was the Tokyo OLYMPICS! But showing that Japan was already starting to take COVID-19 a lot more seriously than some of their public pronouncements may lead you to believe before the whitepaper release date might undercut the article's implication that his whitepaper changed the public narrative and thus the author would be less deserving of asspats and clout. I've heard people say that this pandemic highlights the (unfortunate) severe lag time of real-life discourse to Twitter's discourse (what is "known" on Twitter versus public narrative).[^1] From that angle this report could be a good thing to try to short-circuit that gap. My opinion is the attempt failed (more accurately their conclusion was already stale), and this writeup brings it right back around to the worst parts of Twitter's discourse - personal brand marketing and clout-chasing. [^1]: While that's undoubtedly true, Twitter also generates a massive amount of garbage takes which are conveniently forgotten through severe selection bias (looking back with hindsight to see who was right is easy). Online takes also have zero cost compared to reality; you can throw infinite virtual darts at a dartboard but in reality you can steer your meat machine down only one path. Thus there will always be a lag between the two.