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I wonder if people are aware how turgid and impenetrable is their prose.

Does the person who wrote this understand that they are incapable of communicating effectively? Do they do it anyway to prove some kind of point that is tangential to the main one? Is there some sort of secondary gain involved in being unclear?

In short, is the author getting some sort of self-aggrandizement out of explaining things poorly, or are they just incompetent?

Unaware, is my bet. The vast majority of technical writing, both online and in print, is either dumbed down beyond utility, or utterly incomprehensible. Communication is a specific skill, and vanishingly few have expertise in a given field, and the ability to promote those ideas.
The author's audience is other "rationalists". His goal is to boost his standing with them. I imagine the style is very effective at this.
> Whereas the New York City subways continue to run, and California thinks weed sales are an essential business.

If the model is no good then it might make sense to come up with alternative models and compare predictions. Instead of doing so this piece is mostly snark that is at least as unrealistic as the assumptions the model being criticized.

Shutting down the NYC subway system would likely cause serious problems for essential workers who still need to get around. Cannabis users in California include people who experience seizures without it and the result of shutting down the legal trade would without doubt be a resurgence of the illegal trade which has many downsides not least of which being likely increased spread of CoV2.

Isn’t this intentionally to model the first wave?