He is a libertarian lawyer at the Hoover Inst., and his article was informing the Trump admin. Probably the Tories, too. Here is the article:
Here is an interview with the New Yorker, and he does not like his precepts being challenged:
He loses his temper at the reporter.
His precept:
"At some tipping point, the most virulent viruses will be more likely to kill their hosts before the virus can spread. In contrast, the milder versions of the virus will wreak less damage to their host and thus will survive over the longer time span needed to spread from one person to another. Hence the rate of transmission will trend downward, as will the severity of the virus. It is a form of natural selection."
He speaks of medical professionals:
"Their great weakness is [not] understanding general-equilibrium theory...What I’m doing here is nothing exotic. I’m taking standard Darwinian economics—standard economic evolutionary theory out of Darwin—and applying it to this particular case."
He is cribbing straight from The Selfish Gene. By Dawkins’ definition, "Successful" parasites don't kill their hosts, because then they will die too. So Epstein (and many people) assume that adaptation MUST automatically kick in gear, because genes are "selfish" and want to "live". This is just survivorship bias. We don't see all of the "unsuccessful" genes and virus anymore. The Tomb of the Unknown Parasite, we don't have that. Apparently, someone forgot tell the virus that it is "unsuccessful"? Does the virus not have a cell phone?
How about this:
"And, so, the situation that you get is you cannot use any exponential system because essentially then everybody is going to be dead, because things just keep doubling, doubling, and doubling."
Well, that's good news! By extending that precept, extinction itself becomes impossible, have i got that right?
Thanks to Dawkins, we often impute consciousness to our virus. Teleology! The Magic Invisible Hand of the Free Market in Mutations! Yes, Dawkins is partly to blame for this stuff. Long ago, he informed my world view, but his act is outdated. He is a dogmatic crank these days.
“When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.”
(Lear, Act 4 Scene 5)