If people weren't dying, it would be hilarious had badly understood this epidemic is. Months since the start, we have no idea how infectious the virus is, how many people have been infected, how deadly it is, how effective (or not) containment is, how many people will need to be hospitalised or how long for.
It's actually incredible. I'm very cynical, but I wouldn't have believed Western governments could have floundered so badly if I'd been told even a month ago...
It doesn't help that they leaned heavily on Chinese numbers. Even with data from southern Europe that is likely to be more accurate, people relied on numbers coming out of China because they were early and more numerous... But not enough thought given to openness, and now we've been trying to correct interpolations and extrapolations with a fraudulent starting point for the past two months.
Do you have any counterexamples where novel germs or viruses were better understood in a shorter amount or time? From my POV, it just looks like a genuinely hard problem right now.
I wouldn't dispute its hard. I don't think coronavirus has any comparative example. Nothing this contagious/disruptive has occurred in modern times. I just find it amazing that we're 6(?) months since the first diagnosis, and we know so so little.
Maybe that's life, but maybe if China was honest or the US got its testing together we would not be here?
It's actually incredible. I'm very cynical, but I wouldn't have believed Western governments could have floundered so badly if I'd been told even a month ago...