Re:A case for ending lockdown
by icebraining on Thursday April 30, 2020 @11:58AM
(#23032284)
What did you get right in late Feb that the WHO and such were still wrong about? I feel like by that time it was already fairly clear from their communications that this was going global and heavily affect everyone.
Where WHO and others were mistaken in their communication was where they were discouraging use of facial covering. And I meant only that here. AFAIR, they were very correct about the severity of the disease. Unlike ECDC[0]; I read their reports too, and AFAIR, they were still only predicting moderate risk for Europe as late as second week of March.
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I did some little thinking and modelling of my own late Feb, and reached the correct conclusions by following a simple exponential model, having very basic understanding of epidemiology, and being mindful of error bars (mostly ones created by me being a layman in the field).
On the other hand, I trusted WHO and CDC on masks around February; even posted things to HN to that extent. I now regret it and consider it a failure of not doing enough first-principles reasoning, and not digging into the feeling of confusion I had when reading the official advice.
What I got blindsided by was supply chain impacts. I read the daily updates on /r/supplychain with fascination; while I realized things are interconnected, I didn't realize just how much and in what non-obvious ways.
Bottomline, the lesson I draw from the pandemic is to trust myself a bit more, and attempt to carefully reason from first principles more often.