Re:Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early:...
by m0zg on Friday March 27, 2020 @02:45AM
(#22700844)
It's not "misinterpreted". No self respecting academic will willingly admit to a blunder of this magnitude, so he's just walking it back one bit at a time as the number of the ground go more and more out of alignment with their modeling.
That study suggests that _because_ the virus is more transmissible, and because most people do not have symptoms, a ton of people had it already without paying much attention. Think about it. If it's so transmissible as the "walked back" estimate suggests, wouldn't the UK, which implemented isolation measures only very recently, and which pretty much _lives_ in the pubs, be very, very fucked right now? And it's not fucked. 162 cases per million, only 163 people in critical condition, 9 deaths per million (flu, for instance, claims 142 people per million in the US), although I'm sure the numbers will go up significantly before they are out of the woods.
Moreover, after restrictions were partially lifted in China and Korea and people were put back to work the epidemic did not restart there. This does not line up at all with the initial "we're all gonna die" rhetoric.
You should also mention the Oxford study also mentioned in the article if you want to maintain some semblance of unbiased opinion: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Mod...
That study suggests that _because_ the virus is more transmissible, and because most people do not have symptoms, a ton of people had it already without paying much attention. Think about it. If it's so transmissible as the "walked back" estimate suggests, wouldn't the UK, which implemented isolation measures only very recently, and which pretty much _lives_ in the pubs, be very, very fucked right now? And it's not fucked. 162 cases per million, only 163 people in critical condition, 9 deaths per million (flu, for instance, claims 142 people per million in the US), although I'm sure the numbers will go up significantly before they are out of the woods.
Moreover, after restrictions were partially lifted in China and Korea and people were put back to work the epidemic did not restart there. This does not line up at all with the initial "we're all gonna die" rhetoric.