I woke up and started working on finishing revisions to my book. As I was making coffee I finally realized why these times are so stressful. It& #39;s because of the variable I have insisted on for months: UNCERTAINTY.

You all may have read the distributions of "infected", "ill",
"will require hospitalization", "will require ICU", "will require ventilation". Because of what& #39;s been reported in Wuhan and the Princess cruise is taken as a basis, a lot of people talk about the 80-15-5 (80% of mild, asymptomatic cases, 15 cases need hospitalization, 5% in ICU)
There are some assessments about percentage of deaths.

BUT WE FUCKING DO NOT KNOW.

We don& #39;t.

Each case is different.

I keep reading about entirely healthy people who one day are ok, next day are in the ICU, one week later they& #39;re dead.

You can& #39;t make inferences right now.
This virus does NOT behave in the same way as others. It& #39;s not SARS, it& #39;s not MERS, it& #39;s not influenza. It& #39;s something worse. MUCH worse. And there& #39;s still a metric tonne of uncertainty surrounding it. That& #39;s why we& #39;re having the mask vs no mask discussion. That& #39;s why people...
... have hoarded toilet paper, and hydroxychloroquine. That& #39;s why people aren& #39;t sheltering-at-home when they potentially could.

There& #39;s still so much uncertainty around COVID-19 that we cannot make life decisions simply because we have so much incomplete information.
During my PhD, I took courses on decision analysis, multicriteria decision-making, decision-making under uncertainty, risk analysis. I devoured everything from Paul Slovic to Robin Gregory to Terre Satterfield to Sheila Jassanof to Jeanne Kasperson to Roger Kasperson.
I know the literature on social amplification of risk, the risk society of Ulrich Beck, how to do MCDM. But NOTHING, seriously, nothing I read or studied has prepared me to live with this extreme degree of uncertainty.

When will things get back to normal?

Newsflash: NEVER.
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