It's everywhere all at once

Was it a massive R0?

Read this important post from fellow PANDA exco member and some behind the scenes scientists.

Summary: Was the supposed c19 first wave actually a reflection of coordinated, misguided, panicked measures and their acute effects on a fragile health care system?

The fact is that excess mortality data don’t temporally or spatially demonstrate a naturally spreading virus. We see rapid spatial and temporal synchrony - it happened all at once everywhere (e.g. in Italy and the UK). Just look at this:

These proprietary maps of excess deaths in the UK show that week of March 25, no excess. Two weeks later, massive excess deaths in care homes all over the UK. There is no path of spread. It’s everywhere all at once.

This seems more likely the result of synchronous policy panic than a deadly virus that would need a massive R0 to spread like this. Of course it may have already been well spread long before, but that would mean it wasn’t very deadly.

Is the debate about origins of the virus just a diversion to keep folks from looking closely at the real culprit: not a super dangerous novel virus, but a super dangerous novel panic that collapsed fragile care systems? The latter implicates policy makers, so...