Short thread RE: uncertainty and COVID strategy.

Some thought COVID was overblown and that an aggressive response was a wasteful overreaction. Some thought it was uncontrollable and we should just try to mitigate as population immunity accumulated. Both now look wrong, but...
...let& #39;s suppose they turned out to have been right about the facts of the matter. Would they have been right about their proposed initial strategies? I think the answer is clearly no and that it& #39;s worth reflecting on the reasons *why* it is no
To do so, let& #39;s consider two academics both of whom have made their name by preaching uncertainty and criticizing the overconfidence of other intellectuals: John Ioannidis and Nassim Taleb. Both, of course, pointed out early in the pandemic that there was a lot we didn& #39;t know
But Ioannidis argued that this meant taking action to slow the spread was dangerous and unsupported by the science. Taleb argued that our uncertainty was *precisely* why we had to act immediately. As you might guess, I agreed with Taleb: https://twitter.com/dylanhmorris/status/1240391653996847108">https://twitter.com/dylanhmor...
What Taleb understood, and what public health officials in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam understood, was that there was an asymmetry between overreacting and under-reacting https://twitter.com/dylanhmorris/status/1239083541100728320">https://twitter.com/dylanhmor...
Even among people who thought COVID *wasn& #39;t* overblown, there were people were worried about "second waves" if we suppressed things too much in the early days. I felt this was penny-wise and pound-foolish
Why? Because our efforts to understand the pandemic, build healthcare capacity, develop antivirals, improve testing and tracing infrastructure, etc, don& #39;t magically stop while we& #39;re intervening. If you don& #39;t know, *buy time until you do know*. South Korea understood this.
I& #39;m not alone in making these arguments. Besides those I mentioned, @joel_c_miller, for one, has been making them frequently, and very well. But I think it& #39;s still not being said enough. Buying time helps us save lives and save livelihoods/the economy. It& #39;s worth it
@fernpizza, @jplotkin, Simon Levin, and I have written a paper that touches on this, if you want to read more. As we say at the end, real world policy must emphasize robustness, not efficiency

https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.02209 ">https://arxiv.org/abs/2004....
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