Pg: I've never met anyone with a gut feel for exponential growth

This person should look harder. I know plenty of people used to operating at exponential growth and the growing pains it implies. Plenty of financial and biological systems require it.

The realistic view is also that nothing stays at exponential growth forever. It usually tapers off until something changes. Yet people demand everything stays the same with growth year-on-year at same rate. Past performance does not imply future performance but useful patterns can be found if you pay attention.

Extrapolation requires experience. Easy way or hard way.

Worse still, exponential growth combined time-lagged observations (e.g., asymptomatic infection period, lack of testing, bureaucratic delay in reporting, etc.).

If you wait until it seems like the right time to act, you will have waited far too long.

nearly everything I've expected to grow exponentially has eventually ended up being sigmoidal.

Also every physics person I studied with who worked on radioactivity has a gut feel for exponential growth and decay. Every statistician, and every computer programmer. Also most biologists. He probably just interacts with a lot of normies.