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Anonymous ID: 22f381 March 30, 2020, 7:19 p.m. No.8630493   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>0516 >>0565 >>0630

What if the 'sky-is-falling' coronavirus models are wrong?

 

As Carl Cannon, Washington bureau chief and executive editor of RealClearPolitics, recently wrote, political bias and social “wokeness” infect everything. From news, sports, weather and entertainment to the food we eat, everything is politicized — even, sadly but not surprisingly, science and medicine and even something as frightening and life-disrupting as the COVID-19 coronavirus, as we saw this past week when the Senate and then the House fought over the terms of a relief package for a nation in virtual lockdown.

With regard to the virus itself, however, the only things that can help us deal with it effectively are facts, truths and evidence, which, unfortunately, seem to be in as short supply as ventilators, face masks and other emergency material.

Indeed, much of the problem in determining the best responses — medically, socially, financially and otherwise — is that we still don’t know enough about COVID-19 beyond its apparent high mortality rate for older people, especially those with underlying medical conditions. Yet is there another side to the “sky-is-falling” models that are driving much of our responses? Are we not allowed to explore the arguments from acclaimed experts in the field without being accused of being partisan hacks or science deniers?

Logic and simple survival would seem to suggest that we all would celebrate if the world-is-ending models were proved to be dramatically wrong. And it seems that a few brave souls indeed are questioning some of the conventional wisdom.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist Michael Levitt throws a hope-inducing bucket of cold water on the nonstop alarmism being repeated by some in the media and in public office. Levitt says unnecessary panic has been created by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. “What we need is to control the panic,” he writes. “We’re going to be fine.”

Levitt studied the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its outbreak long before many health experts predicted it would. He now predicts a similar outcome for the United States and the rest of the world.

 

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/489962-what-if-the-sky-is-falling-coronavirus-models-are-simply-wrong