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Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over

lesswrong.com · 24,250 words · saved by 1 readers

A year ago, there were reports coming out of China about a new coronavirus. Various people were saying things about exponential growth and the inevitability of a new pandemic, and urging action be taken. The media told us it was nothing to worry about, right up until hospitals got overwhelmed and enough people started dying. This past week, it likely happened again. A new strain of Covid-19 has emerged from southern England, along with a similar one in South Africa. The new strain has rapidly taken over the region, and all signs point to it being about 65% more infectious than the old one, albeit with large uncertainty and error bars around that. I give it a 70% chance that these reports are largely correct. There is no plausible way that a Western country can sustain restrictions that can overcome that via anything other than widespread immunity. This would be the level required to previously cut new infections in half every week. And all that would do is stabilize the rate of new infections. Like last time, the media is mostly assuring us that there is nothing to worry about, and not extrapolating exponential growth into the future. Like last time, there are attempts to slow down travel, that are both not tight enough to plausibly work even if they were implemented soon enough, and also clearly not implemented soon enough. Like last time, no one is responding with a rush to get us prepared for what is about to happen. There are no additional pushes to improve our ability to test, or our supplies of equipment, or to speed our vaccine efforts or distribute the vaccine more efficiently (in any sense), or to lift restrictions on useful private action. Like last time, the actions urged upon us to contain spread clearly have little or no chance of actually doing that. The first time, I made the mistake of not thinking hard enough early enough, or taking enough action. I also didn’t think through the implications, and didn’t do things like buying put options, ev

x Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over — LessWrong COVID-19 Updates and Analysis Covid-19 World Modeling Curated 276 Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over by Zvi 24th Dec 2020 Don't Worry About the Vase 38 min read 134 276 UPDATE 7/21/2021: As you doubtless know at this point, it was not over. Given the visibility of this post, I'm going to note here at the top that the prediction of a potential large wave of infections between March and May did not happen, no matter what ultimately happens with Delta (and the prediction was not made with Delta in mind anyway, only Alpha). Some more reflections

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