THREAD: This @BretStevensNYT column is a great example of how a bright, often very insightful, person can sound like a blithering idiot when wandering into science subjects w/o humility. Some good lessons here, tho./1
“It’s Dangerous to Be Ruled by Fear” https://nyti.ms/3bicD2D
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Caveat: Altho article is confused, there're some valid args interspersed; I will articulate my thoughts on how those args might have been made productive at end of thread. BTW, I’m pro
@bretst in general, but feel I need to be blunt abt this column. /21 reply 0 retweets 0 likesShow this thread -
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@BretStevensNYT starts by comparing Trump’s non-response with CA Gov’s mass quarantine, saying “Both reactions were driven by politics, not evidence“. This is ABSOLUTELY untrue. How could he make such a HUGE error? /31 reply 0 retweets 0 likesShow this thread -
Part of it appears to being misreading an essay by my colleague & fellow contrarian, John Ioannidis. Many have taken the wrong message from his essay, which has some good points & some musings meant more as “food for thought”. The call for random sampling I agree w/ 100%. /4
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First, there is a lot of scientific evidence on handling an epidemic like COVID19. Regretably, initial steps – large scale testing & case tracking – was criminally bungled, so we’re in a difficult situation in which tough choices, given current uncertainties, need to be made. /5
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Given where we are now, evidence strongly supports strong quarantine as the right policy. The evidence is clear that this type of virus, w/o PubHealth intervention, is most likely to infect 10s of millions (perhaps over 100M) Americans over a couple of months. /6
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We have strong evidence that we would be looking at a minimum of 100K deaths. Overwhelming evidence suggests that a strong national public health response is the right response for next couple of weeks, & has good chance to dramatically reduce both total cases & total deaths. /7
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We’ll be VERY lucky at this point if we end up with only 100K deaths from #COVID19, actually, because we wasted weeks doing in essence nothing.
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