I’m sorry to say it, but the author is wrong in his central point that this was not a failure of prediction.
> For that matter, why didn’t you post this – on Facebook, on Twitter, on the comments here? You could have gone down in legend
Well, I did. I started hedging against a stock market collapse on Feb. 19 and sold half my tax-exposed holdings on Feb. 28, incurring a really painful skin-in-the-game tax bill.
In the first week of March, I made a very alarmist post on my personal social media profile, announcing to all my contacts a call to institute quarantines, work-from-home, reduce public transport use, face masks in public and outlaw crowds until control of the epidemic control was evident. This was after reading anonymous first-hand accounts from doctors in Lombardia, following the obvious exponential trend of spread in every country hit and watching China shut down the economy of a meteopolis. At this point, it was clear what would happen. Maybe not if you struggle to disregard opinions that don’t match the data, but that’s not the point.
I never take these kinds of defensive or alarmist measures in times of peace. It was a one-time thing, and I felt like a complete freak for going against the consensus and sticking my head out among educated and respected friends. Had the worst FOMO of my life regarding the tax bill and stock market hedges. But I was right, I am not usually wrong and this is not a post-fact rationalization. This was predictable in early March, at the latest.
Maybe the author is right that society would have been unable to heed these warnings, but that’s practically a tautology, given that we know how things played out in most Western countries.
My family heeded my warnings, and stayed safe through the most critical phase when the disease was rampant but not obvious.
Yeah, the grocery stores emptying out in Korea and Italy is weirdly what set off the ‘this shit is about to get real’ alarms for me. Sold stocks, stocked up on food, told everybody I knew to get ready for 1918.
> My family heeded my warnings, and stayed safe through the most critical phase when the disease was rampant but not obvious.
The vast majority of people "stayed safe" through the most critical phase, regardless of behavior. even a million infections in USA is statistically almost no one.
It's an exponential process and the world is big, and still now, deep into the disaster, most people haven't developed symptoms.
I have family in their 70s with asthma in the south-east of France, near Italy. They were warned in the range of dates I mention here, at a time when their authorities encouraged them to go out and vote during a rampant, poorly acknowledged epidemic for which the healthcare system was unprepared. A culture where friends and strangers kiss on the cheek twice at every meeting.
You've got a point regarding the population in general, and the sentence you're pointing at is peripheral to my point. But I have caused a significant decrease of risk of a catastrophic outcome to some people dear to me.
They likely would have been okay. But "likely" doesn't cut it when the cost of defensive measures are low and the result of being unlucky is permanent loss of health or death.
> For that matter, why didn’t you post this – on Facebook, on Twitter, on the comments here? You could have gone down in legend
Well, I did. I started hedging against a stock market collapse on Feb. 19 and sold half my tax-exposed holdings on Feb. 28, incurring a really painful skin-in-the-game tax bill.
In the first week of March, I made a very alarmist post on my personal social media profile, announcing to all my contacts a call to institute quarantines, work-from-home, reduce public transport use, face masks in public and outlaw crowds until control of the epidemic control was evident. This was after reading anonymous first-hand accounts from doctors in Lombardia, following the obvious exponential trend of spread in every country hit and watching China shut down the economy of a meteopolis. At this point, it was clear what would happen. Maybe not if you struggle to disregard opinions that don’t match the data, but that’s not the point.
I never take these kinds of defensive or alarmist measures in times of peace. It was a one-time thing, and I felt like a complete freak for going against the consensus and sticking my head out among educated and respected friends. Had the worst FOMO of my life regarding the tax bill and stock market hedges. But I was right, I am not usually wrong and this is not a post-fact rationalization. This was predictable in early March, at the latest.
Maybe the author is right that society would have been unable to heed these warnings, but that’s practically a tautology, given that we know how things played out in most Western countries.
My family heeded my warnings, and stayed safe through the most critical phase when the disease was rampant but not obvious.