There’s going to be a lot of back and forth in coming days about when we knew or should have known how bad the coronavirus was.
The answer is real simple: When the world’s second largest economy completely shut down. That’s the signal this wasn’t some bad flu.
The answer is real simple: When the world’s second largest economy completely shut down. That’s the signal this wasn’t some bad flu.
There may be attempts to have debates about data, data quality, etc. But the fact that a country would completely shut down was about as loud a signal as you can ask for that this was a bad disease, highly contagious, and capable of completely overwhelming health care systems. 2/
You are going to hear a lot of efforts in coming weeks & months to say “China lied” - and to be sure there are significant issues with Chinese data. But the Chinese also very publicly and humiliatingly shutdown an entire country’s economy. That’s when we were on notice. 3/
But I’m going to be honest, the reaction of a lot of the political class at the time - especially on the right but also some on the left - wasn’t so much alarm but schadenfreude. “The Chinese Commies are flailing!” 4/
The failing at the end of the day was a political one, not a scientific one, not a data one. And it is ours. 5/
