You're Full of Shit!! No! You Are!!

A twitter thread arguing about the lack of accuracy of predictions about the infection. The point of the initial twit is that the prediction timeline was only 2 weeks, and getting it so wrong must mean something. No, none of it is me. I am not a Twit.

The basis of the confrontation is: how much testing was/is being done, and the extent to which the perception of testing adequacy colored predictions. My recollection, all those few weeks ago is:
- we have no tests
- we test only those been to China
- we test only those who present as sick
- "everyone who wants a test can get one"
- some areas provide testing to those not obviously sick. some places require a Rx, others not
- we're generally back to testing only the sick

Of course, it's no longer doubted by anyone with a functioning brain that the asymptomatics (e.g., the Covidiots) are the prime driver of infection. It's the answer to a simple question: once Covid was identified on our Home Shores, who would get near anyone sneezing and coughing? Only the lonely, and the brain dead.

I suspect many experts gave their estimates assuming we'd come up with a concerted, coordinated effort to do the needful (shelter in place, etc.)

Very few could imagine we'd be so irrationally, catastrophically uncoordinated (starting from the head-of-rotten-fish top.)
-- SHELTER IN PLACE IF YOU CAN, COVID19 =/=THE F* FLU

The basic problem with the arguing is that by the time the 'contest' was run, the sick were being tested. Surveillance testing and contact tracing, not so much. But all you need to know to predict the future of some phenomenon is the preceding time points of that phenomenon. If you believe in time series analysis, of course. In this kind of situation where the data mechanism is simple and well enough known (symptomatic/asymptomatic infection divide doesn't matter), you figure out the shape of the curve and extend. Now, more and more large population centers, and less so in shitkicker states of course, are taking steps to curtail transmission. So, one might contract any further estimates from here. One pundit said on the teeVee (in the other room, so I don't know who or where is mentioned) that R₀ had dropped from well over 2 to 1.5. That will diminish transmission in those areas where that's a true number. It doesn't mean, note, that the contagion is halted in said areas.

But, naturally, I've not seen or heard any pundit factor in the impact of the Florida Covidiots on future infections. We'll see in the next couple of weeks. If the Florida Covidiots spread the virus like peanut butter on a wet t-shirt contestant and they went back to their bucolic small-town USA homes where their Right Wingnut governors don't believe in science, then the game has only begun in earnest.