read it all, even tho Piper is not totally kind to the President
19 Mar: The College Fix: Stanford epidemiologist warns that coronavirus crackdown is based on bad data
by Greg Piper, Associate editor
‘Like an elephant being attacked by a house cat’
“If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR [virus] tests, the number of total deaths due to ‘influenza-like illness’ would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average.”
This was not written by some right-wing crank claiming coronavirus is a conspiracy to deny President Trump a second term, or an excuse to bring down capitalism.
It’s from a sobering and illuminating essay by Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis, co-director of its Meta-Research Innovation Center, published in the life sciences news site STAT.
The coronavirus-driven crackdowns on public life by state and local political leaders are being made in a data vacuum, Ioannidis warns, and extreme government measures to prevent infections may actually lead to more deaths...
His own “mid-range guess” for the COVID-19 mortality rate – 0.3 percent of the general population – would produce 10,000 deaths, but that would not even register a blip “within the noise” of estimated deaths from “influenza-like illness.”...
The conventional wisdom to “flatten the curve” – managing the load on the health system through social distancing – could even backfire, Ioannidis writes...
https://www.thecollegefix.com/stanford-epidemiologist-warns-that-coronavirus-crackdown-is-based-on-bad-data/
I thought that too but according to UCSF online conference a few weeks ago UCSF Experts on the Epidemiology, Science, & Clinical Manifestations of COVID-19, and UCSF Response 20-30% of COVID-19 hospitalizations end up in the ICU. 17-29% of hospitalized patients end up with ARDS. The quick development of ARDS is another scary pattern. Clear CXR on admission ARDS within hours in some cases (usually these patients have hit the shortness of breath stage). It may look the same from 20,000ft but it's not the same in the trenches.
I highly recommend the video conference put out by UCSF. Many of the questions people have about treatment are being tried at UCSF and they share their guidelines for treatment. One question left open is prophylactic treatment for medical workers. That will likely be tried once some real data becomes available on patients. There will be a lot of nurses that I know of that would gladly try it even with the information we have now.