[2006alum]

Since this was first posted a few days ago, it has been somewhat widely refuted. As someone noted when his article first came out a few days ago (I can't find it now), his one datapoint is also aberrant in a number of respects. In addition to being elderly, the Diamond Princess Cruise population that was symptomatic had rapid testing and intervention early on, with no shortage of respirators and critical care beds for those who needed it. And there was no concern about testing and contact tracing, because everyone was presumed to be at risk, and they were totally isolated, so no concern about spread. 

None of those assumptions hold true for the population at large, and as Italy is showing us, widespread transmission coupled with an inadequate supply of medical treatment leads to a CFR that is much higher than .025% to .625%. What's incredible in Italy is that they are doing fairly wide testing and 3/4th of those tested are negatives. So it's not like there some vast number of probably infected people who aren't being tested. 

In other words, what he should look at is if every cruise ship had the same problem happen at the same time and had to rely on the same hospital for treatment. This is as much a public health problem as it is one of simple epidemiology. 

Here's a few other hot takes:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1239967206579908609?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1240286173446184960?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1239969810496098306?s=20[/tweet]

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/we-k...-covid-19/

[2006alum]

Since this was first posted a few days ago, it has been somewhat widely refuted. As someone noted when his article first came out a few days ago (I can't find it now), his one datapoint is also aberrant in a number of respects. In addition to being elderly, the Diamond Princess Cruise population that was symptomatic had rapid testing and intervention early on, with no shortage of respirators and critical care beds for those who needed it. And there was no concern about testing and contact tracing, because everyone was presumed to be at risk, and they were totally isolated, so no concern about spread. 

None of those assumptions hold true for the population at large, and as Italy is showing us, widespread transmission coupled with an inadequate supply of medical treatment leads to a CFR that is much higher than .025% to .625%. What's incredible in Italy is that they are doing fairly wide testing and 3/4th of those tested are negatives. So it's not like there some vast number of probably infected people who aren't being tested. 

In other words, what he should look at is if every cruise ship had the same problem happen at the same time and had to rely on the same hospital for treatment. This is as much a public health problem as it is one of simple epidemiology. 

Here's a few other hot takes:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1239967206579908609?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1240286173446184960?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1239969810496098306?s=20[/tweet]

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/we-k...-covid-19/