As I have argued before (https://t.co/unNHBpyuqK), this kind of chart is totally fake, because the methods used to estimate the basic reproduction number of SARS-CoV-2's variants are unreliable, but it's worth pointing out that basically everything else on that chart is fake. 1/n pic.twitter.com/IO3v1s7Z1c

— Philippe Lemoine (@phl43) January 28, 2022

Not “fake,” I’d say, but highly, highly context-dependent. Reproduction numbers have a lot of slop, to put it non-technically. Depending on culture/environment/season, even measles can vary between an R0 of less than 2 and an R0 of 18.

Every number has politics behind it — and the more it has to do with humans (is not some physical constant), the more that is the case.