You and I must be thinking of different professionals.
At any rate, here are two very very very simple models of this epidemic: a) cases will grow linearly, b) cases will grow exponentially.
Super simple. extremely different outcome. Now, one still has to make policy decisions.
I think the solution is not fewer professionals, but more and better professionals.
Not sure about you, but I suspect they're thinking of professional politicians and the professionals politicians hire.
That's the kind of bias he was probably thinking of.
Exponential processes don't exist in nature, they always break into some other curve at some point.
Epidemics are (more) properly modelled by the Gompertz function[1], and the position of the "transition" between the exponential portion and non-exponential points it the important point.
That is exactly what the person you are replying to is saying ("they always break into some other curve at some point.").
An epi curve is created from observations and shows new infections per day.
The Gompertz function is a mathematical formula and can be used to estimate total infections up to a date.
However, if you take the epi curve and plot the aggregate number of infections you'll find a curve that the Gompertz function approximates quite well.
The entire point is that forecasting exponentials is easy but becomes badly wrong at some point and that point is difficult to forecast
Newton's model captures the essence but isn't the eternal truth. Relativity proved that. Today, singularities have been proven to exist that point to missing pieces in Einstein's theory.
The point is, simpler models are a good approximation even though they don't hold true under scrutiny, so, at what point do we stop obsessing over details and complex models professionals come up with or the policy-makers seek because surely there's law of diminishing returns at play here?
I think what GP means is, leaving it upto professionals alone is a recipe for disaster because of the inherent corruption, greed, biases, and prejudices at play.
> So what are you advocating?
Not speaking for GP, but simpler models are more likely to be a good approximation and more than enough, anyway [0]? Simplicity helps because it stops the pundits and politicians from sort of running away with it?
[0] Newton's theory of gravitation has been supplanted by Einstein's theory of relativity and yet Newton's theory remains generally "empirically adequate". Indeed, Newton's theory generally has excellent predictive power. Yet Newton's theory is not an approximation of Einstein's theory. For illustration, consider an apple falling down from a tree. Under Newton's theory, the apple falls because Earth exerts a force on the apple—what is called "the force of gravity". Under Einstein's theory, Earth does not exert any force on the apple. Hence, Newton's theory might be regarded as being, in some sense, completely wrong but extremely useful (The usefulness of Newton's theory comes partly from being vastly simpler, both mathematically and computationally, than Einstein's theory). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong