Definitely agree, this whole affair has a real rashamon vibe to it. it feels like everyone involved (the article, philipson, and furman) are talking past each other. As far as I can tell, everyone agrees forecasting and curve fitting are different things, and that a cubic fit (red line, allegedly) would be a bad representation of what the future will hold. The disagreement seems to be:

- furman believes (or claims to believe) the original tweet was being deceitful by presenting a curve fit as a curve fit but leaving enough ambiguity that casual viewers might interpret it as a prediction of future deaths dropping to 0 by mid may

- philipson believes (or claims to believe) furman thinks that curve fitting and forecasting are the same thing, does not address whether the original tweet was attempting to be coy or deceitful

- article believes (or claims to believe) that philipson believes that a curve fit actually is a good prediction of the future, then goes super wide with it to make some vaguely related point about academia

I believe no one is lying or stupid, but everyone is finding the worst possible interpretation of events so they can dunk on each other.