Thread by @unseen1_unseen

I think this example will help people understand the talking points about the virus a little better. Remember back in Apr/May of last year when people were freaking out about the surge of illegal immigrants coming to the border and people were making assumptions

...of more than 1 million illegals immigrants will cross the border based on the current numbers? Well, as I stated at the time the assumptions didn't take into account any mitigation procedures or humans taking any actions.

They instead made assumptions in a straight line....

....closed system. So what happened? Well, Trump got involved. He threatened tariffs, he declared an emergency, he worked out agreements with Mexico and other central American countries, he moved funding and increased the wall. The end result was we didn't get 1 million illegal.

...immigrants. In fact, since May the numbers at the border have dropped every month and catch and release was ended. So the "muh we are all doomed" crowd was wrong.

Now take that lesson and apply it to the china virus.

The "muh we are all doomed" crowd are once again taking something and assuming it will go in a straight line without taking into consideration any mitigating procedures or humans reacting. The sad part is they are doing this even with current numbers showing something different.

As we have seen in China the virus is in retreat. They are now closing their makeshift hospitals. As we are seeing in South Korea the death rate is dropping as more tests are done to catch the mild cases. As we are seeing in Italy and Japan governments are imposing...

mitigation procedures like quarantine. As we are seeing at the NIH and CDC clincial trials are being started to find a medicine to help and a vaccine. As we are seeing in the USA testing is coming online with private labs entering the fray.

All of these actions show that those using a simple straight line assumption are wrong. Could it still be bad? Sure. Could it burn itself out come spring? Sure. Could it cause problems we haven't thought about yet? Sure.

But

What we do know is

The patients we are seeing are almost all the severe cases and the mild cases aren't showing up in the data for lack of testing. That mitigating procedures in China and South Korea show the cases are going down. That China's economy is coming back online

We also know that the % of infected in the hotzones are a small % of the total population in that hot zone. We know that humans can adapt and increase medical care to a hot zone. We know that society hasn't fallen and we know the virus doesn't produce zombies.

The human reaction is unknowable but what is knowable is that people and governments are not just going to sit around and wait for the virus to kill everyone. Steps will and are being taken. Each one will throw off those straight line estimates.

Each one will give us additional information to better understand the virus, it's death rate, it's spread, etc. So basing your worldview on guesstimates or talking points that change daily isn't the way to go. Take sensible precautions, listen to the news, do some math with

...real figures and data and know that most of these estimates are based on worst case scenarios. Humans have a great ability to deal with new things and make efforts to minimize those worst case scenarios.