Okay, words aside, does the right strategy look like the famous GIF taken literally, or like a feedback system where we keep turning social distancing on and off so the graph looks like a heart rate monitor, or like a “hammer” reset followed by a successful emulation of South Korea, or
I don’t know and you don’t know and Tomas doesn’t know and Carl doesn’t know. It’s hard!
No, it is really easy. If the society is capable of executing the feedback system, then it has a method of driving R0 below 1. If it can do that, it should execute the hammer. This requires less aggregate time under extreme measures than the feedback system. If the society fails to execute the dance, then it can try the feedback system, but that sounds a lot harder to me than the dance.
Like me, these people make both substantive and semantic objections. In fact, theirs are a strict superset of mine (see that last Bergstrom thread re: Gaussians!).
I am not saying “look, I was right, the experts agree with me, please recognize this.” I mean, I am saying that.
But you were wrong about Gaussians. So much the worse for the experts.
There are only two choices: herd immunity, or the dance. Herd immunity can be accomplished by vaccine, by permanent change to society to reduce R0, or by having 1-1/R0 proportion of people survive the disease. Without a vaccine and without permanent change to society, the area 1-1/R0 is fixed, although a full-speed epidemic could infect even more.
No, it is really easy. If the society is capable of executing the feedback system, then it has a method of driving R0 below 1. If it can do that, it should execute the hammer. This requires less aggregate time under extreme measures than the feedback system. If the society fails to execute the dance, then it can try the feedback system, but that sounds a lot harder to me than the dance.
But you were wrong about Gaussians. So much the worse for the experts.
There are only two choices: herd immunity, or the dance. Herd immunity can be accomplished by vaccine, by permanent change to society to reduce R0, or by having 1-1/R0 proportion of people survive the disease. Without a vaccine and without permanent change to society, the area 1-1/R0 is fixed, although a full-speed epidemic could infect even more.