he's saying a lot of the same things that i am re:immunity and the question of what success is, in context. but, he's not being given the opportunity to formalize it.

i know it's going to sound harsh to a religious person, but this is homo mathematicus - it's numbers, it's data, and it's how it is.

so, we're often presented with the illusion that protective immunity is a choice. of course, it is not - not with the time frames in front of us. rather, the choice in front of us is whether we are to get to protective immunity quickly or whether we are to get to protective immunity slowly. we will not be able to withstand our innocence for the next two-three years, while a vaccine is readied.

the formalization of this realization occurs in the vector of an optimization problem, and when you work it out you realize the true futility of an abstinence-first approach, because you're running up against the mutation rate. any coherent analysis of this is going to put us a few months behind it, just like we are with the flu. i see little reason to think we won't get a vaccine, but we'll probably never stay on top of it.

so, if you let it loose too fast, you're not just overwhelming the system, but also maximizing the likelihood of mutation; if you slow it down too much, you're putting selective pressure on it to evolve, while maximizing the damage. what's the right middle point?

it's a calculus problem.

this man won a nobel prize, recently. so, i'm in good company in my analysis, apparently.