This is update CIX.
Let’s summarize, shall we?
My first post on the panic was 27 January 2020: “Taleb Chastises Calm Journalist, Advises Precautionary Panic To Coronavirus“. Taleb almost at once became a shrinking, shrieking hersteric. Which I should have, but did not see, would have become the default position among Experts and rulers almost planetwide.
My second post was on 3 February 2020: “Unnecessary Panic Over Coronavirus?” Note the question mark, which left room for uncertainty, which at that time still existed. Health theater had already begun, and was laughable even then.
There was lots of uncertainty at the start. Would this bug stay in China, have just one wave, and so on. Many on our side bought the Chinese propaganda and panicked, and became just as hersterical as Taleb. This was exasperating. Our own Moldbug said, “In the next few months, you or someone you love will drown of a cough.” (He’s still at it, by the way.)
The word “exponential” was on everybody’s fingertips. Twitter became idiotic, with those on the right advocating panic, and those on the left screaming racism.
This was just silly, so, for fun and instruction only, since I did not guess the size of the resulting panic, I posted on 13 February 2020 some R code I had been using to post projections on Twitter. This became Update I. This used only the data available at the time, and common models on pandemics. Exponential forever was impossible, but you could hardly get anybody to understand that.
I had no sense the entire world would retreat toward effeminacy, and so didn’t take these models seriously. Except to smack those who kept screaming doom. Even as early as February people thought this is the end. There were “sober” predictions of billions-with-a-B dead.
By 3 March, and Update III, we had Blue Cheka warning about farts. That update also showed what happened seasonally with flu, including the season leading into the Hong Kong fly pandemic of 1968.
We pointed out that there were many other pandemics, like the Asian Flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong, and others, which were much deadlier, and with no panics. Back then, the CDC had these historical events on their web page, saying each killed “up to four million” globally. They’ve since removed the “up to”. You have to laugh.
Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health.