The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News

wsj.com

11 points·paulpauper··8 comments

Non Paywall Mirror: https://archive.fo/AVjMe

Not too much in this piece other than what's been said in countless HN discussions already.

Except for blaming the media for criticism of a flawed study.

The bane of evidenced-based science is prudence, or more generally reasoning under uncertainty with asymmetrical outcomes.

Unsurprising the WSJ publishes an opinion piece carrying water for this unfortunate perspective.

So you are saying we should abandon evidence-based science when reasoning under uncertainty with asymmetrical outcomes?

There are many decisions where evidence is near worthless and you have to follow alternative lines of logic.

Any circumstance where you’re dealing with low probability, high impact events you will necessarily lack evidence to estimate the true expectation from prior experience (aka evidence). Your prior will be biased in its mean and almost no amount of “evidence” can fix that.

Fortunately epidemics are an area where data can be collected until there is no lack of evidence.

Epidemics are a great example where we can say that prudence is recommended. Perhaps 80% of the population of the Americas was destroyed by the eurasian plagues - diseases which Europe had reached viral equilibrium with but the Americas had not.

The median of a new outbreak is not worrying, the mean is worrying, and the min is apocalyptic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com