I strongly agree that the curve is flattening in NY. In fact, it's flattening.... almost everywhere.

And not because of lockdowns. I strongly support this paper's thesis:

What's flattening the curve is.... information! https://twitter.com/CharlesFLehman/status/1247154793392615425

In every case of curve-flattening we've documented, it begins BEFORE major measures, unless those major measures came at like 5 cases or something.

What we can also see is by almost any metric, social distancing measures began in most countries before policies.

As more people get sick and publicize their illness, that motivates more and more skeptical people to take it seriously.

What we need is not harsh lockdowns.

What we need is crystal-clear communication backed up by reasonable policy signals.

Different regions have achieved curve-flattening in different ways. There's no one policy mix to rule them all, because you can't centrally fight an epidemic. It's too diffuse. You need all of society to cooperate.

That coordination problem is only solved through information.

Test and trace, quarantine, lockdown.... they all do something. But honestly, school cancellation probably does more. Curve flattening occurs in response to effective social distancing measures, which occur in response to ***public information***.

Thus, the central task of any public health body is INFORMATION. Inform people who is sick, and where they've been. In Hong Kong we literally have a regularly updated map of where sick people live:
https://chp-dashboard.geodata.gov.hk/covid-19/en.html

Inform the public of risks, mitigation strategies, etc. CLEAR COMMUNICATION is the best policy tool for fighting epidemics. WHat you need is a functional social narrative which induces cooperation without actually having to mobilize state resources.

Now, that narrative has to actually motivate action. It can't just be talk. You need to actually cancel school and ban assemblies and limit business activities. There's no substitute for less contact.

But lockdowns without clear communication fail, while more moderate distancing with effective communication can succeed.

And it's not just central communication! The paper advances a notion I think is EXTREMELY important:

People take it seriously when they see sick people.

When you see your friends getting sick, THEN you take it seriously.

In this sense, one of the best disease-fighting tools we have is.... Facebook. Twitter. Social media. People telling their stories can spread the news way faster than in the past.

You might think I'm telling you about America.

I'm not.

I'm telling you why the CCP is so evil and why in the wake of this disease the world must take more seriously the need to end this evil institution.

Social distancing begins when people are aware of the risk. Governments can help people become aware of the risk by clearly communicating about it. Clear communication and reasonable policy responses will do a ton of work at reducing the spread.

But the CCP prevented this. They suppressed information, arrested doctors, censored social media. They turned a nasty cold into a global pandemic because they shattered the sharpest sword in the public health toolkit: information.

Every death is on their heads. Every. Single. One.

And it's not like this is a mystery. Just in December I was sharing a paper using Chinese data showing that the public health burden of Chinese air pollution fell sharply when China finally allowed public pollution monitoring!

They know this! China's leaders know this! They know that information can save lives!

They just don't value the lives of others!

Good information can save lives. Bad information kills. Even policy responses themselves are endogenous to available information.

Speaking of information, here's my latest daily COVID information thread. https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1246997840661905408?s=20

Note that EVEN WITH the flattened curve, this is what New York (city + state) deaths look like:

Confirmed COVID deaths in the latest full week amount to like 90% of typical weekly *total* deaths.

To be clear: the death spike for COVID in NY is gonna be much more prominent than for 9/11.