I agree completely. However, I think the amount it has gone up is critical here. A lot of the countermeasures and increased preparation are linear countermeasures against an exponential threat—maybe a region that could previously only handle 1000 ICU patients can now take care of 2000, but if R0 is significantly above 1 (lets say 1.5) this only buys you about one and a half week. I think this topic deserves its own entire post at some point, and I didn’t want to get bogged down in details in the section on “What doesn’t change”, but if the true rule is “if under X circumstances in March it was smart to go into lockdown, it is November smart to go into lockdown 2 weeks after seeing X” my conclusions are still the same.
I might write that full post sometime on this and more back-and-forth, if people are interested. I made serious concessions to brevity above.
I agree completely. However, I think the amount it has gone up is critical here. A lot of the countermeasures and increased preparation are linear countermeasures against an exponential threat—maybe a region that could previously only handle 1000 ICU patients can now take care of 2000, but if R0 is significantly above 1 (lets say 1.5) this only buys you about one and a half week. I think this topic deserves its own entire post at some point, and I didn’t want to get bogged down in details in the section on “What doesn’t change”, but if the true rule is “if under X circumstances in March it was smart to go into lockdown, it is November smart to go into lockdown 2 weeks after seeing X” my conclusions are still the same.
I might write that full post sometime on this and more back-and-forth, if people are interested. I made serious concessions to brevity above.