The other day I wrote about the problem of a Trump team incapable of admitting or learning from mistakes. I didn't realize either how bad it was or how spectacular an example we'd soon see of this character flaw 1/ nytimes.com/2020/05/04/opi…
It turns out that the Trump economics team did some awesomely stupid analysis of epidemiology, a subject of which they know nothing, to produce numbers Trump liked 2/
Their response when this was pointed out was (a) to insist that the dotted line extending their fitted curve into the future wasn't a projection, even though it looked like a projection to everyone who saw it and (b) to slime the critics 3/
Let me say in particular that the attempt to pull academic rank on Jason Furman — from an administration whose chief economist is Larry Kudlow, and which tried to put Stephen Moore on the Fed board — is especially awesome 4/
In related news, the Republican governor of Arizona has told epidemiologists to stop modeling Covid-19. Ignorance is strength 5/ azcentral.com/story/news/loc…
