[avsteele]

I find Taleb's argument specious. The risk inherent in a reaction can be pretty catastrophic as well; for example we are now seeing some project 20%+ unemployment in the next quarter.

In addition, we do have data on the possible harms from Coronovirus, since we have more CFR data at this point. This puts bounds on possible harms. For more detail see John's other article in statnews. The results of the Diamond Princess cruise ship also are telling [1].

It looks like Iceland has about 1% of its people infected [2]. This didn't happen overnight, and Iceland is doing OK.

[1] https://twitter.com/maximlott/status/1241718453700038658?s=2...

[2] https://www.government.is/news/article/2020/03/15/Large-scal...

[rglullis]

If you are driving along the coast and you hear on the radio some report of a earthquake by the ocean, do you wait until you know how big the tsunami will be or do you just do your best to get the fuck out of there?

Also, how hard is it to understand that if Taleb's argument was turned into action on January 26th (57 days ago!) the number of people being impacted would be an much smaller fraction of what it is today?

Also, today we have a virus that is "only" killing 1% of its people, and you seem to be okay with it. What about the next ones? Do you think we should take a "wait-and-see" attitude for the next epidemic that might turn out to kill 5% of the infected? What if it turns out to kill 10%?

[yongjik]

Diamond Princess (pop. 3,711) was stationed right next to Japan (pop. 126M) and could use its full medical resource. That's not a good model for an actual country hit with the virus.

[natalyarostova]

Well, consider if we reacted late January when he wrote that article it would have been very cheap to contain...

[Barrin92]

Then the immediate question is, the next time we react early and it turns out we overreacted, is that something you're going to register as well? In particular in authoritarian countries like China which actually have a history of vast overreaction based on a 'security-first' mindset.

Ioannidis actually points to one other example in the article. There are several corona strains already in circulation with fatality rates as high as 8% among the elderly. If this reaction is rational, are we irrational not locking down everything every winter?

[natalyarostova]

Maybe we can just lock things down when we sport extremely dangerous new viruses. It doesn’t seem that tricky to me. I was following this from late December, and it was clear it was a potentially huge risk.

[pmachinery]

> It looks like Iceland has about 1% of its people infected.

Apologies if I've misunderstood something but your link says 473 cases, which is more like 0.1% of the population.

[avsteele]

fro the article:

"deCode has published the results of a total of 5 571 tests. Those have yielded 48 positive results (0.86%)"

'deCode' is the new series that will test everyone.

[pmachinery]

Sorry, I just saw this now. Misunderstanding I was. Thank you.

[ttul]

Iceland’s serology will be interesting to follow.