Originally published April 6, 2020
I set a personal record by writing four memos in the month of March, responding to the rapidly unfolding coronavirus crisis. The task was made easier by the dearth of available data, meaning I was able to proceed without doing much research, mostly providing personal views.
In the first of the four memos, Nobody Knows II, I described the distinction made by Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch. He said there are (a) facts, (b) informed extrapolations from analogies to other viruses and (c) opinion or speculation. At that point, I