> I still don't really fully understand the rationale behind the cloak and dagger "hash of report" business.
I didn’t read every word of it but got the sense there were political and/or Japanese cultural sensitivities why he didn’t initially feel comfortable with a full public, attributed release.
I think you're being a bit too accommodating. McKenzie does have a flair for the dramatic; he did the same thing with Tether where there really was no reason he couldn't just say what he thought when he thought it.
At the same time, yeah, it seems very plausible that a white guy in Japan announcing the Japanese pandemic response is run by fools would face blowback for it.
>At the same time, yeah, it seems very plausible that a white guy in Japan announcing the Japanese pandemic response is run by fools would face blowback for it.
Haha, yeah pretty much that. And any blowback may also have been directed at his employer, Stripe. So there was certainly cause for caution.
That said, I don't think recognizing in late March that this virus spreads faster and is harder to control than previous similar ones was much of a leap of insight, and the article does seem a little too self-congratulatory over that.
Having that realization back in January is evidence of foresight, but late March not so much. But maybe the situation was different in Japan and merits it, dunno.
That said, I don't think recognizing in late March that this virus spreads faster and is harder to control than previous similar ones was much of a leap of insight, and the article does seem a little too self-congratulatory over that.
He made it amply clear to me that it wasn't much of a leap of insight, and the point of his original essay was to create proof that he knew that at the time.
The fact that taking the action that he did resulted in a group of people who put together a compelling enough argument with good enough connections to get the New York Times to write about it DOES seem like it is worthwhile.
As it turned out, having the New York Times asking whether the emperor had clothes caused lots of people in Japan to ask the right question which in turn caused the government to switch courses. The fact that this happened again underscores the point that, on publicly available data at that time, it didn't take an amazing leap of insight to understand that the Japanese story didn't add up.
The point being that this was foreseeable at the time. Which was indicated the first time when he said that he assumed that the authorities in charge with access to more data than he had already had come to same conclusions that he did.
> That said, I don't think recognizing in late March that this virus spreads faster and is harder to control than previous similar ones was much of a leap of insight, and the article does seem a little too self-congratulatory over that.
Having that realization back in January is evidence of foresight, but late March not so much.
If this had been obvious to the Japanese authorities in late March they would have declared a nationwide state of emergency in late March, not late April. They would have issued stay at home orders for almost everyone 25 days ago, not five days ago. Being right when the government is wrong, it being wrong will cost lives and trying to get them to save those lives is not trivial.
The doubling time of this virus is well under ten days. If lockdown had begun on the date this memo was published there would be under a quarter as many cases as there are now.
I didn’t read every word of it but got the sense there were political and/or Japanese cultural sensitivities why he didn’t initially feel comfortable with a full public, attributed release.