Tomas Pueyo wrote a widely read 2020 series on Covid-19, covering lockdowns, testing, contact tracing, and herd immunity.
HN links his Covid posts in early-pandemic threads on lockdown timing, testing capacity, and buying time, where commenters debate how his arguments apply to countries.
>>> "We might see something that vaguely resembles what you are describing."
No, there's a 100% chance we will see it if we don't take measures. Watch the news from Wuhan, Italy - it's apoplectic. It's really bad, and if they didn't shut everything down, it would be a zombie movie.
We know that 'shutting things down' works because in China, the virus is contained, at least for now and medical facilities are starting to be able to cope.
>>> "The morbidity rate is far less than 3%"
Source? Because every credible source and the data coming out of various countries puts the rate at somewhere near 3%, not 'far less than' 3%. Some facts [1]
Even a 1.5% death rate is existentially problematic, we're still talking millions of people dead.
Moreover, if you bother to look at the data, you'll see that morbidity rates are a function of access to care, meaning that when Hospitals are 'overwhelmed' - people die at much greater rates. In Italy, it's 5%.
But there's a bigger issue: 20% of people who get it requires specific medical intervention, and at least 5% of them 'intensive care'. COVID is totally overwhelming medical the medical system in 100% of the areas wherein the contagion has let loose; people getting zero treatment, medical staff getting infected, people dying in the hallways, in their homes.
FYI 20% of 330M Americans is 66M people, only a fraction of whom need to be infected for 'zombie apocalypse' in the Hospitals, again: see Italy, Wuhan for what will happen.
>>>…
That story and his individual points fall apart upon analysis.
The below is the best current analytical distillation I've seen of where we are:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
The upshot is:
a) there is a huge diff between localities that act aggressively and prepare and those that dont
b) the ones that prepare and act aggressively to reduce exposure see death rates below 1%. This is still 5-10x more deadly than the flu, and is best case
c) the ones that dont see death rates above 5%. This is 50-100x worse than the flu.
In the US Washington and San Fran are failing to act aggressively enough in time.
The article doesnt discuss NYC, where I live, which has similar levels of infections as Washington tho far fewer deaths. The piece explains how the difference in death rate indicates NYC is in a far better position than Washington, and my own analysis is that we may still have time to stop the worst case, but it is really about what happens in the next several days.
Even in worst case, most people will themselves be fine, but everyone knows at least someone immune compromised or elderly or otherwise much more significantly at risk. So everyone's social or familial network will be impacted.
In terms of the future, it seems likely that even in best case, there will be subsequent waves that hit pockets that were missed the first time around. The difference in impact again will be in how overwhelmed the local hospital…
Lots of people in these coronavirus threads have been confusing "confirmed cases" as reported by various countries, vs the actual number of cases, and using this to propose various conspiracy theories about governments downplaying or suppressing information about the situation.
Here is an interesting analysis including analyses done by Chinese health officials to estimate the actual number of cases in the past on a given day, based on symptom data collected from confirmed cases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk
Other countries should follow suit.
Chart:
https://miro.medium.com/max/5376/1*r-ddYhoUtP_se6x-NOEinA.png
Commentary:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
> This is one of the most important charts.
> It shows in orange bars the daily official number of cases in the Hubei province: How many people were diagnosed that day.
> The grey bars show the true daily coronavirus cases. The Chinese CDC found these by asking patients during the diagnostic when their symptoms started.
To be precise, even the grey bars are an underestimate of the true cases in reality, since they would exclude unreported cases as some people were turned away from hospitals. (In the UK they are advising people with non-severe symptoms to stay at home, where they can't be tested.)
It's encouraging that a retrospective analysis confirmed that the Wuhan lockdown had the intended effect however, to reduce the true spread of cases.
The issue with is the word "scientist".
In academia, science is the pursuit of postulating a falsifiable theory, then gathering facts to verify that theory, and then going through a process of intensive peer review that either confirms, dispels or amends those findings.
The formality of the academic process is a necessity. The value of scientific findings entirely depends on the trustworthiness of the research. That is, how were the results obtained, which line of thinking was followed, did the research exclude crucial biases, etc.?
The importance here is that academic research is used as a pillar to produce products and services we all use in daily life. For instance, if you need a hip replacement, you want to be sure that prosthetic was designed based on rigorous scientific findings and studies that can vouch for safety and comfort.
The difference then with "data scientist" is that they often they don't apply the same rigorous research practices. It's easy to pick a dataset and bang off visualizations; it's a different story to actually come up with relevant questions, assert the quality of the data at hand and publish your findings towards a community of domain experts who are actually able to review your findings.
One needs in-depth domain knowledge to do that. Good data scientists will understand this limitation. They often work in a specific domain in a supporting capacity: bringing technical skills and capabilities to domain experts that don't have those…
It looks like you need to find someone who can help make your post feel more professional - perhaps Ask HN for help or just directly email one of the clued up people here that are open to cold emails (patio11?).
I almost didn’t read it because the title sounds too generically woowoo, and the domain you are using seemed unprofessional. Then on reading the article, you didn’t give your background, an irrelevant picture of a painting opens the article, and the sidebar of your article topics are all over the shop. Sorry for being so negative: it is much easier to find reasons why something doesn’t feel right, and I’m not a fantastic marketer so I can’t offer you fixes I could predict would help.
It seems like a really good idea (are there others that have suggested it?), but I suspect it needs to be more convincing with a bit of repackaging if you want to push it.
Maybe add comments to those 2 papers with an “elevator pitch” or a request for other relevant info, and link to an improved post, and it should bubble up and find the right people to evaluate it.
Edit: also perhaps get your idea onto the various Covid daily link sites: good ideas should bubble up. Use Twitter to relevant people. Pass the idea to this guy who writes fantastically and has audience: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
Good luck, we need some!
I wouldn't put an idea on Twitter or Facebook. That's where I put a short joke, or a pun, or some political troll meme. Then I watch the mentions and likes roll in. That's not to say that it never happens, but they aren't really well made platforms for it, outside posting a link to an actual blog.
Personally, I think the blogosphere is covered pretty well for me by the likes of Medium. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but they've made a damn good job at cornering that part of the market for those more serious posts that were previously relegated to the blogosphere. That's a place I'd put a more well-formed idea. A great example is the article, "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" by Thomas Pueyo.[1]
Outside that, blogs still exists! I still even have my own. I think the complaint is rather that they're hard to index or search. And to that end, there are many solutions and ways around it that still exist, such as syndication or even RSS.
[1]: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca