Jai Dhyani: This seems like an extremely overconfident prediction and I don’t think it accurately reflects popular opinion regarding pandemic response.
Rob Bensinger: What are the main things you think Zvi’s wrong about? What do you think will happen?
Jai Dhyani: A series of predictions to which I assign each individually 75%+ chance: Social distancing is going to remain popular. Reopening will continue at a slow and steady pace. Large indoor gatherings will continue to be mostly avoided. Continued increases in testing capacity will slow spread and dramatic outbreaks, if they happen, will trigger the return of more aggressive measures with popular support. Masks will range between commonplace to mandatory in potentially risky contexts, and this will significantly slow spread. Coronavirus will return to being the dominant news story by the fall. US infections will continue to increase, but slowly. We will not approach herd immunity in the US in 2020.
I think the one I disagree with is “Continued increases in testing capacity will slow spread and dramatic outbreaks, if they happen, will trigger the return of more aggressive measures with popular support. ” At least for realistic values of dramatic.
As I say explicitly, but perhaps not clearly enough, I’m highly uncertain whether the default level of response that we both kind of expect will be sufficient to beat this thing. I actually think it probably will be relatively fine, but with very low confidence.
The thing this expresses confidence in is that we’ve lost the state capacity to do anything to alter the course of events, other than somewhat slowing down the pace of reopening, should things not work out. That doesn’t mean everyone will party like it’s 2019. Whether the new normal is good enough, we’ll find out.
It’s good feedback that I come off as being much more confident of more things than I meant to express!
From Facebook:
I think the one I disagree with is “Continued increases in testing capacity will slow spread and dramatic outbreaks, if they happen, will trigger the return of more aggressive measures with popular support. ” At least for realistic values of dramatic.
As I say explicitly, but perhaps not clearly enough, I’m highly uncertain whether the default level of response that we both kind of expect will be sufficient to beat this thing. I actually think it probably will be relatively fine, but with very low confidence.
The thing this expresses confidence in is that we’ve lost the state capacity to do anything to alter the course of events, other than somewhat slowing down the pace of reopening, should things not work out. That doesn’t mean everyone will party like it’s 2019. Whether the new normal is good enough, we’ll find out.
It’s good feedback that I come off as being much more confident of more things than I meant to express!