What are this guy's qualifications to speak with authority on this? His bio at the bottom indicates that he specializes in "cognitive architecture and AI." His articles prior to this one all address those subjects. Despite the addition of numbers, a lot of this article comes off as hand-wavey. Why does everybody get a say in this? How TF am I supposed to make any informed decision if every viewpoint on the internet is presented with equal ethos?
What I like about this model is that it discusses what "effective measures" means, and offers a number of variables that we might tweak. Maybe it says much of the same, but it at least acknowledges that this is a complex and developing situation that will inevitably buck all current models.
There's a lot of shit like this on Medium and Vox these days. I agree with you - it's a bunch of /r/conspiracy stuff parading as info and there's a lot of it right now. But it's also one of the few sources to go "we've got, best guess, 160,000 ventilators and we're looking at, best guess, three million concurrent users of those ventilators." The number I found when I dug around was 60,000. American Hospital Association, a week ago, was predicting 1.9m admissions. So yeah - the numbers are hand-wavey but at the same time, "flatten the curve" is likely to provide a few orders of magnitude less prevention than we need. It's like mk and the trees: A good idea, a noble idea, but not enough to solve the problems we're about to face.
Hey, I'll even take "not enough" at this point. But the numbers are selective. Ventilators are important, but actually not indicated or advised for all cases (some populations are at much higher risk for death by secondary VAP in these situations- early reports by professionals working with COVID patients recommend avoiding ventilation for certain populations). High PEEP devices such as BIPAP will also be used. As will ECMO. The article also notes critical bed shortages, but ignores measures taken in already hard-hit communities re. expanding capacity by transforming non-essential facilities into more critical bedspace. Is it enough? No. Is it still going to be totally overwhelming? Yes. But calling all efforts to lessen the impact "a deadly delusion," and then closing the argument by saying "but this is all back of the napkin stuff, please don't quote me" seems... unhelpful? Not to mention, after all that, he says "you know what helps? Containment." Which last I checked was one leg of the curve-flattening stool. Is he NOT recommending hand hygiene and social distancing when isolation isn't possible?
Agreed. With such a click-bait-ish title, he loses some cred too. Flattening the curve a deadly delusion? Take it easy chicken little. How about, "Best Examples of Curve Flattening" or "How to Best Flatten the Curve". As a supposed man of science and numbers, maybe let the numbers speak for you. Of which, he actually does a decent job of raising some pertinent questions.