One of the biggest mistakes people make in thinking about corona is in what they think they are measuring, what they think is similar, and why they think something will work. Let me try and give you examples of each. A lot of times people think they are measuring X but they 1/n
They really are measuring Y. Does official Chinese GDP ACTUALLY measure Chinese GDP? No. It measures what the CCP wants to report as GDP. Investors know it and will actually talk about what they think Beijing will feel comfortable reporting. Q1 will be a great picture of this 2/n
With the economic slowdown everyone knows is there, they need to report a lower number but not too low to cause panic. In other words, official Chinese GDP does not actually record Chinese GDP. What we think we are measuring is NOT what we are actually measuring. 3/n
This of this idea in corona context. Does testing ACTUALLY lower numbers? No. It literally does nothing to solve disease. There is no medical treatment. False negative rates are really really high. So why do people want testing and what is even bad testing ACTUALLY measuring? 4/n
In reality, testing is proxying intellectually for corona awareness and other disease prevention efforts like self quarantining, higher hand washing, and mask wearing. In other words, when people say testing, even if testing data is really bad what they mean to measure are 5/n
Is something that visibly combats the virus. If a patient presents with corona symptoms it's easy to treat them as such even if the test is negative. This leads to the final point of making bad comparisons. The problem with the cross country data is people are picking 6/n
Whatever country fits their desired preference. In Vietnam we have I think like 50 cases since it started but we have no mass testing program and we don't bodies dropping in the street. Korea has lots of testing and Japan doesn't. Why are northern Italy and Wuhan similar? 7/n
One must exercise a lot of caution drawing similarities or models to follow based upon the diversity of countries, the diversity of responses, and the diversity of outcomes. Very easy to cherry pick whatever meets your preferred bias. I'm gone go have me a Corona now. Peace.
