This article, by a Stanford epidemiologist, is well written and expresses many of the issues and concerns that I think skeptics are raising. And, just to remind everyone, being skeptical is at the heart of good scientific process...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bearer-of-good-coronavirus-news-11587746176?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
In reference to trying to determine the actual mortality rate of the coronavirus, he had this to say:
“If that is the true rate,” he wrote, “locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.”
and perhaps his most relevant quote for this thread to contemplate is:
The news is filled with stories of healthy young people who die of coronavirus. But Dr. Ioannidis recently published a paper with his wife, Despina Contopoulos-Ioannidis, an infectious-disease specialist at Stanford, that showed this to be a classic man-bites-dog story. The couple found that people under 65 without underlying conditions accounted for only 0.7% of coronavirus deaths in Italy and 1.8% in New York City.
“Compared to almost any other cause of disease that I can think of, it’s really sparing young people. I’m not saying that the lives of 80-year-olds do not have value—they do,” he says. “But there’s far, far, far more . . . young people who commit suicide.” If the panic and attendant disruption continue, he says, “we will see many young people committing suicide . . . just because we are spreading horror stories with Covid-19. There’s far, far more young people who get cancer and will not be treated, because again, they will not go to the hospital to get treated because of Covid-19. There’s far, far more people whose mental health will collapse.”
I remain concerned that those touting continued lockdown strategies do not take into account the costs, in other more subtle ways, of their strategies.
If we have a disease that raises the total death rate of our country by 2% in a year NET....is that a disaster we should avoid at all costs? What is the increase is only 1% NET? We have running counts of covid-19 deaths, but we have also had discussions on this thread about the uncertainty of the accuracy of those numbers. As the joke meme goes, "man shot in head 72 times dies of coronavirus". (That is actually the way he would be counted....)
I think we have to be careful about finding the balance with this virus between accurate health information, much of which has been published in this thread...and sensationalizing its effects or over-reacting to it. For example, I honestly do not know if shutting down our colleges in the Fall is a good idea or a bad idea yet. I would like to learn more about this virus and its affects.
