The coverage of the coronavirus crisis includes an annoying phenomenon: On the one hand, the mainstream media ignored this in February and sometimes ridiculed the people worried even despite the fact that the danger could be easily predicted by anybody thinking about exponential growth. On the other hand, many people in the same group were concerned about exponential growth in the context of overpopulation.
It's as though the I-Bleeping-Love-Science people don't actually understand what they're spouting. It even looks like they were only “concerned” about overpopulation because it was an excuse for legalized abortion and free birth control.
But wait, there's more. The reason exponential growth is worrisome in the case of epidemics is that the time needed to react (months or more) is far greater than the doubling time (around a week). The time needed to react to problems caused by alleged overpopulation is usually less than a doubling time. (I've mentioned this before; it's not something I made up just now.)
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