Let me just say, up-front, that I don't believe Christopher Ferrara is capable of concise writing. Even when I agree with his premise, I have to wade through 2500+ words to get to the point. THIS tome clocked in at 2,772 words. Find an editor, Chrissy.
All over the country people are being fined or arrested and jailed for violating suddenly imposed restrictions on their every movement and gathering,
Fair enough, but a few hundred words later, Mr. Ferrara says
The following are the nine states that have refused to impose lockdowns.
So, which one is it, Christopher Robin? Is this an all over the country thang, or are there pockets that "have seceded from the United States of Mitigation"? Again...Chris...the word for which you're seeking is EDITOR.
I agree with Mr. Ferrara that the Numbers don’t line up. However, it's Chris' numbers that don't line up. For example:
It is becoming clearer with each passing day that the death toll from the Wuhan virus is not rising exponentially as the “experts” predicted but only modestly in some places while leveling off or even declining almost everywhere else in the country
Let's take this bit by bit. First...I agree that the 'it's exponential, bro' hysterics are as bad as the flubros. Virus cases and deaths actually follow a logistic pattern.
However, if you plot the daily cumulative fatality count for the US from March 5 to today, and fit an exponential curve to the data without time-series adjustments, you get y = 7.231e0.2259x; R² = 0.9941. So, for now, actually, it IS following an exponential path thought I will say, the last few days cumulative counts are below the fitted curve.
As for the second part of the above rant - while leveling off or even declining almost everywhere else in the country - that's simply not true. Actual, real numbers are your friend. Go to GitHub and get the daily case data: over the past five days, the percentage growth of fatalities by state was 3%+ for at least 35 states by day, and up to 44 states for some days. If I crank up the percentage threshold to 10%, the fewest number of states with such as gain falls to 24 - certainly not a majority but hardly almost everywhere.
By the end of this 2700+ word diatribe, where Chris certainly commits a few venial sins ("Scarf Lady"...really, Chrissy?) not to mention a heaping helping of pride, Chris says:
As the real data emerge
The thing about this whole article, is that Ferrera has some legitimate points. But man o man o manischewitz, after tedious, sloppy writing, ad hominem attacks, factual inaccuracies, and inconsistencies, with friends like Chris...