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Face Masks May be Necessary and Sufficient to Stop Covid-19
An entrepreneur’s perspective on Nassim Taleb’s conclusions about face masks
I’ve been following the writing and thinking of philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb since the start of the pandemic (and really, for a solid decade prior to that). As with much of the 2008 financial crisis and many other “shocks”, Taleb was either on the cutting edge of anticipating impacts, or several months or years ahead of everyone else.
In the case of Covid-19, he was advocating for measures like social distancing and lockdowns in the West as early as January 2020. I based large chunks of my own writing about strategies for reopening on his thinking and writing.
Taleb has now turned his focus to a new aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic: face masks.
This is exciting to me both because I appreciate his thinking on the topic, and because masks are something I’ve been thinking about intensely since the start of the pandemic. I’ve been approaching them from more of a…