Tuesday, April 14, 2020

FiveThirtyEight: A Comic Strip Tour Of The Wild World Of Pandemic Modeling

A Comic Strip Tour Of The Wild World Of Pandemic Modeling
By Zach Weinersmith, Maggie Koerth, Laura Bronner and Jasmine Mithani. Published Apr. 13, 2020

Here we are... In the middle of a pandemic... Staring out our living room windows like aquarium fish. The questions on everybody's minds: "How bad will this really get?". "How long am I going to have to live cooped up like this?"

We all want answers. And given the volume of research and data being collected about the novel coronavirus, it seems like answers ought to exist. And numbers are certainly out there. Trouble is, they're kind of all over the place.

A great comic-narrative explaining why we have no straight answers and are not likely to get any for quite some time. It's nobody's fault, but the result of lots of people trying to draw meaningful conclusions based on data that is inconsistent and highly uncertain.

h/t Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

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