In the early days, this exponential growth was something the public and policymakers – in America and Europe, at least – proved unable to grasp. Politicians from Donald Trump to Boris Johnson consistently downplayed the risk exponential growth represented. Early research, released during the first year of the pandemic, demonstrated exponential growth bias at play. At all stages of the pandemic, people underestimated the future course of the spread. Given three weeks of actual data for the growth of the virus, participants were asked to predict infection levels one week and two weeks later.
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