I dislike censorship, so I'm no fan of what LinkedIn apparently did.
With regard to the other topic, you posted an inaccurate tweet by some guy with a video of Levitt complaining about how science has missed the mark. My reply is below with the link.
Greg with all due respect my brother , a 40 year resident of Scottsdale Arizona , had two of his family tested just within 2 weeks... did not relate anything about difficulty getting tested... said the hospital rush and positives were down as well as the number of fatalities ... so maybe ...
rutgers.forums.rivals.com
From the wiki page (with citations) on Levitt. Nobody believes those China numbers (that he supposedly nailed), which have to be at least 5-10X greater, so that prediction sucked and most of his other forecasts haven't been so hot either, especially his prediction of 10 total deaths in Israel (over 1000 and counting) and his most recent gak in predicting on 7/25 that COVID would be over in 4 weeks and deaths would be below 170K.
In March, the Los Angeles Times reported that Levitt correctly forecasted in February that the COVID-19 pandemic in China would soon peak and that China would end up with around 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths from COVID-19.[41] However, it has been noted that Levitt actually made a number of predictions, including incorrect forecasts, in February about China's COVID-19 trajectory[42], including one on February 7, 2020 claiming that "by 14-Feb. we will have reached 95% of the eventual death count of 928".[43] Levitt also has stated his belief that achieving natural herd immunity to the virus is possible[44] and has spoken against lockdown orders.[45]
Levitt also wrongly predicted that Israel would suffer no more than 10 COVID-19 deaths[46]. On July 25, 2020, Levitt predicted that COVID-19 in the United States would be over "in 4 weeks with total reported deaths below 170,000".[47] However, this prediction about the reported death count also ended up being wrong as the number of reported deaths from COVID-19 in the United States exceeded 170,000 on August 16, 2020, only 3 weeks after Levitt's prediction.[48]
And calling this a "bad flu?" Seriously? A bad flu is 60-70K deaths not 193K and likely to be at least 300K by the time we have a vaccine. Also, his comment of a 0.04-0.05% population fatality ratio regardless of lockdown is just nuts. That would be 165K in the US, which isn't far off the current number, although it'll be at least 2X off soon; however, that would be 55K in Japan, where 1357 have died so far and the same is true in many other countries. He also thought we'd do better than China back on 3/25. So tell my why we should listen to Levitt, in general. Doesn't mean he's wrong that science has not always been a shining example during COVID, but I think he's focusing on the bad and not the good, especially the the great worldwide collaborations on research into how COVID impacts the body and on developing new treatments and vaccines.
I'm not a Levitt fanboy and will not (and cannot) defend every one of his predictions. I don't recall seeing your reply. We have been buried at work lately, so much so that we had to increase our attorney head count by 25% to keep up with work. My contemporaries at other patent firms are seeing a similar uptick this year. So, sometimes I post in the morning, or if I take a small break to keep up with my Twitter feed, which includes Dr. Levitt and Ivor Cummins (he is the "some guy" you referred to). Ivor posts under the handle Fat Emperor, which is a great handle. He is one of many people I follow on keto dieting, cholesterol management, etc. For some reason, Ivor (who is Irish) has been concentrating on Covid-19 and lockdowns. So Ivor and Dr. Levitt are brothers in arms when it comes to some of the over the top government restrictions during Covid-19.
Dr. Levitt has quite an interesting life and background- born in Pretoria, South Africa to a Jewish family to a Lithuanian father and a Czech mother--what combination! He know splits his time between Stanford and Israel. I like Dr. Levitt for his ability to speak his mind, even if it against the majority, and he does so passionately and vigorously, without worrying about the consequences. He has earned a vocal group of detractors.
My original post was about how scientists have failed the younger generation and there should have been more cooperation and committees of scientists formed. He is railing against the censorship of scientists with contrary views and the corruption and politicization of science. THAT is what the post was about. You decided to pivot on this and go on a takedown of Dr. Levitt's credibility and how he missed the mark on his predictions.
You denigrate Dr. Levitt's China predictions because "nobody believes those China numbers" and "that predictions sucked." There is no reasonable way to respond to your statements without getting in an argument nobody will win.
As to Dr. Levitt's claim of 10 deaths in Israel, he addressed and clarified in his Tweet that he was referring to excess deaths, whatever that means, but obviously he still missed he mark.
So, back to Dr. Levitt's original stance-- he is anti-lockdown. Didn't he get Sweden right, when he stated on May 4:
“If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity,
and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown. My own feeling is that it will probably stop because of herd immunity. COVID is serious, it’s at least a serious flu. But it’s not going to destroy humanity as people thought.” Current number of Sweden deaths is 5,846.
While it is difficult to compare one country to another because of other measures (such as mask wearing compliance and contact tracing, testing, etc.) there are many countries that did not enact lockdowns that have had some of the lowest case fatality rates- notably Belarus, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil, Japan, Uruguay. I believe Dr. Levitt's overall point on being anti-lockdown is that it is nice wise government policy to shut down the entire economy, when it is better strategy to isolate the elderly and at risk populations.
I don't have time to go back and forth any more on this. Regardless of his predictions, I generally agree with Dr. Levitt that lockdown policies, which often result in increased governmental powers (just look at Gov. Murphy) is bad policy. We had a lockdown in New Jersey, and the NJ case fatality rate is terrible. Maybe NJ would have done a lot better on CFR if they had not done such a terrible job with nursing homes. And NY and NJ lead the nation in deaths per 100,000 people, at 180 and 170. Meanwhile, non-lockdown states like Wyoming (7), Nebraska (22), N. Dakota (21), S. Dakota (20) and Arkansas (31) have done much better on this metric.