The thing is that what people get wrong isn't the shape of the
curve. Every expert models with a logistic curve of some sort, Levitt isn't special there. Gompertz is a logistic curve. Even the smallest mathematical minds know intuitively that it isn't indefinite exponential growth; you can't buy into the idea of herd immunity and think it's exponential. What the average Joe has gotten wrong is describing the curve they envision as exponential.
The real uncertainty is where the inflection point is (the maxima on his red lines of new cases) or the asymptote (the value the total number of cases, his black lines, do not climb above). His first video touches on how "limited" exponential growth isn't as scary. It depends! If the limit on deaths is the entire population, it isn't any scarier, it's just a better model!
That's where the disagreement is, what are the limits, not which curve it is.
To bring it back to this context. It isn't surprising to anyone that it's up and then down, what's surprising is that it was 6 weeks to the inflection point/peak of new cases per day and that the asymptote is far lower than what many predicted.
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In response to this post by HokieHutch)
Posted: 05/29/2020 at 12:53PM