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2020-

2020-10-27 b
THE COVID-CON II

Enough conspiracy, let’s stick to data and science to end the lockdowns, Part 2

... There is no shortage of science and data to challenge the flawed policies of the governments whose basic playbook has been: lockdown, close economy, print money, ignore data, and double down.

This may be a good time to quickly outline my arc of how my views on the pandemic shifted over time.

My journey from Zombie Apocalypse to lockdown skeptic

I began monitoring the reports of a new virus emerging out of China in January. On January 23rd I emailed a friend advising him to go out the next day and pick up some N95 masks. By the first week of February I was stocking up on food, medical supplies, cash, and weapons while advising friends and family to do the same. I was bracing for a full breakdown of the global supply chain and a collapse of the global economy.

Based on early reported numbers of an R0 around 3.1 with an IFR of 5%, it looked like we’d see doubling times of 15 days. By March all three levels of government, city, province and national were reporting case rates and fatalities daily. I put together a spreadsheet and using those numbers as a model I forecast Toronto to have 1.7M cases by the end of June. If the IFR really was 5%, or even 3%, it would mean between 51,000 and 136,000 fatalities.

This was terrifying, so as the world started locking down, it seemed to make sense. In fact I was wondering why we were still allowing inbound flights from hotspots like China? There were rumblings from The Clerisy like the New York Times that blocking flights from China would be racist. This was the early innings of the politicization that was to follow.

But then, a curious thing happened. The rate of change in infections and fatalities started coming down, drastically. (read more)

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