> I feel uninterested in R-nought (or R) when there is evidence for a huge variance around how many people each person will infect. The USA literally, literal

> I feel uninterested in R-nought (or R) when there is evidence for a huge variance around how many people each person will infect. The USA literally, literally did the opposite. We tried, in the initial outbreak, in a few areas, to reduce infections to a manageable steady state. It worked. Then most of the country threw those rules out the window and engaged in some combination of "opening up", relaxed enforcement, and what amounts to a straight up propaganda effort by much of the executive branch and the largest TV news network to convince people that no containment effort was needed. And.... here we are. Covid is controlled pretty much every except in the USA right now. Our outbreak is as bad as it's ever been.