>Yes, you saw predictions of crazy R0 values that you yourself weren't ready to believe. At the time it wasn't solid information, and it never will have been.

You're correct. It wasn't a "gotcha" on your part. I volunteered that information to point out that I was not an alarmist, I wasn't ready to believe the most "alarming" predictions, and yet, somehow, it was still clear to me and the entirety of mainstream thought in the US, how bad it was going to be, before the most contrarian commentators were willing to admit.

>Neither did most European countries. Even in Italy, there was no nation-wide shutdown until March 9th.

In the US, it was still theoretically possible to contain it with "just" 19 confirmed cases at the end of February, even though, of course, that meant likely 10 times+ as many people had it, and were spreading it, when community spread was first reported on February 29[1]

Once community spread was found in the US, and given our lack of ability to test for it, it was a foregone conclusion that it would spread like wildfire in the US, because containment is impossible if you don't know who's infected but asymptomatic.

Already in that first week of March, tech companies such as LinkedIn were already sending people home for the month[2], because it was beyond clear we were going to see rapid community spread. "We are 10 days behind Italy" was a common saying in mid-March.

My own company sent us home later that first week, as we had direct links to places with known community spread. It was out of an abundance of caution, as I don't believe anyone ever got infected. It was an aggressive move, but it turned out to be the right move.

10 days later, a shelter in place order was sent out for the ENTIRE BAY AREA, and then a few days later, for the entire state.

And here we are, 3 weeks later, folks in Georgia saying "we are not Louisiana" (I had to update that from "we are not California" and "we are not New York" because the states ignorant leaders compare themselves to keep shifting as one by one the dominos fall)

>By mid-February, less than 2000 people had died worldwide from COVID-19, compared to at least 10,000 deaths from Influenza in the US alone. I'm not saying the "flu comparison" is a valid comparison, but at that point in time, it was still allowed to be made, even by experts.

It was still "allowed to be made" by people who cannot perform simple extrapolation.

Yes, just because a graph is going up today does not mean it will go up tomorrow -- absent any other evidence

But with a known long incubation period, and roughly 1 month between infection and death, you can know for virtual fact that it's not going to stop at 2000 deaths when known infections is an order of magnitude higher, and there is basically no testing, and absolutely no reason for it to have stopped spreading. (eg, no preventive measures in place, no reason to expect the virus to die off on its own, etc).

And now we have a bunch of people who listened to contrarian opinions to convince themselves that "it couldn't happen here" are going back to find "evidence" to piece together a tenuous line of thinking that could have led even an informed person to be wrong. But constructive a narrative from historically cherry-picked statements is not the same thing as having weighed the available evidence at the time.

[1]https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/three-st...

[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-tells-employees-to-...