Following up a bit on this, @parconley. The second post in Zviâs covid-19 series is from 6pm Eastern on March 13, 2020. Letâs remember where this is in the timeline. From my quick take above:
On March 8, 2020, Italy put a quarter of its population under lockdown, then put the whole country on lockdown on March 10. On March 11, the World Health Organization declared covid-19 a global pandemic. (The same day, the NBA suspended the season and Tom Hanks publicly disclosed he had covid.) On March 12, Ohio closed its schools statewide. The U.S. declared a national emergency on March 13. The same day, 15 more U.S. states closed their schools. Also on the same day, Canadaâs Parliament shut down because of the pandemic.
Zviâs post from March 13, 2020 at 6pm is about all the school closures that happened that day. (The U.S. state of emergency was declared that morning.) It doesnât make any specific claims or predictions about the spread of the novel coronavirus, or anything else that could be assessed in terms of its prescience. It mostly focuses on the topic of the social functions that schools play (particularly in the United States and in the state of New York specifically) other than teaching children, such as providing free meals and supervision.
This is too late into the timeline to count as calling the pandemic early, and the post doesnât make any predictions anyway.
The third post from Zvi is on March 17, 2020 and itâs mostly a personal blog. There are a few relevant bits. For one, Zvi admits he was surprised at how bad the pandemic was at that point:
Regret I didnât sell everything and go short, not because I had some crazy belief in efficient markets, but because I didnât expect it to be this bad and I told myself a few years ago I was going to not be a trader anymore and just buy and hold.
He argues New York City is not locking down soon enough and San Francisco is not locking down completely enough. About San Francisco, one thing he says is:
Local responses much better. Still inadequate. San Francisco on strangely incomplete lock-down. Going on walks considered fine for some reason, very strange.
I donât know how sound this was given what experts knew at the time. It might have been the right call. I donât know. I will just say that, in retrospect, it seems like going outside was one of the things we originally thought wasnât fine that we later thought was actually fine after all.
The next post after that isnât until April 1, 2020. Itâs about the viral load of covid-19 infections and the question of how much viral load matters. By this point, weâre getting into questions about the unfolding of the ongoing pandemic, rather than questions about predicting the pandemic in advance. You could potentially go and assess that prediction track record separately, but thatâs beyond the scope of my quick take, which was to assess whether LessWrong called covid early.
Overall, Zviâs posts, at least the ones included in this series, are not evidence for Zvi or LessWrong calling covid early. The posts start too late and donât make any predictions. Zvi saying âI didnât expect it to be this badâ is actually evidence against Zvi calling covid early. So, I think we can close the book on this one.
Still open to hearing other things people might think of as evidence that the LessWrong community called covid early.
Following up a bit on this, @parconley. The second post in Zviâs covid-19 series is from 6pm Eastern on March 13, 2020. Letâs remember where this is in the timeline. From my quick take above:
Zviâs post from March 13, 2020 at 6pm is about all the school closures that happened that day. (The U.S. state of emergency was declared that morning.) It doesnât make any specific claims or predictions about the spread of the novel coronavirus, or anything else that could be assessed in terms of its prescience. It mostly focuses on the topic of the social functions that schools play (particularly in the United States and in the state of New York specifically) other than teaching children, such as providing free meals and supervision.
This is too late into the timeline to count as calling the pandemic early, and the post doesnât make any predictions anyway.
The third post from Zvi is on March 17, 2020 and itâs mostly a personal blog. There are a few relevant bits. For one, Zvi admits he was surprised at how bad the pandemic was at that point:
He argues New York City is not locking down soon enough and San Francisco is not locking down completely enough. About San Francisco, one thing he says is:
I donât know how sound this was given what experts knew at the time. It might have been the right call. I donât know. I will just say that, in retrospect, it seems like going outside was one of the things we originally thought wasnât fine that we later thought was actually fine after all.
The next post after that isnât until April 1, 2020. Itâs about the viral load of covid-19 infections and the question of how much viral load matters. By this point, weâre getting into questions about the unfolding of the ongoing pandemic, rather than questions about predicting the pandemic in advance. You could potentially go and assess that prediction track record separately, but thatâs beyond the scope of my quick take, which was to assess whether LessWrong called covid early.
Overall, Zviâs posts, at least the ones included in this series, are not evidence for Zvi or LessWrong calling covid early. The posts start too late and donât make any predictions. Zvi saying âI didnât expect it to be this badâ is actually evidence against Zvi calling covid early. So, I think we can close the book on this one.
Still open to hearing other things people might think of as evidence that the LessWrong community called covid early.