“Whatever that # is, is that a price society is willing to pay?”
The people holding that position are quite willing to let society pay such a price as long as no one they care about is part of that number. Once they’re watching a loved one drown in their own body fluids their opinions will change.
L
I think these dissenting doctors are wrong, and also I think they may regret their statements for the rest of their careers. One of the mistakes they made is using the Diamond Princess data when several of the passengers were still in critical conditions. J. Ioannidis for example says the number of deaths was seven, but by now the number of deaths is ten. That takes the death rate up by over 40%.
The mortality rate is now better known. IFR .7%, ten times worse than seasonal flu.
You can find the email addresses for these doctors and let them know they are being used by crackpots to understate the severity of the situation.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext
“Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case.. “
Dear Prof. Ioannidis:
Your article has been cited hundreds if not thousands of times by those who argue that the mortality rate for Covid19 is comparable to the seasonal flu (see a few links below). If you are wrong about this, and if your advice is followed, and the disease a treated as though it were a seasonal flu, the excess deaths could be in the millions. Now that the true infection mortality rate of .7% is known from the study of repatriated foreigners who were in Wuhan (see attached published study), I hope you will consider retracting your argument based on the Diamond Princess and publish that retraction.
Sincerely
Brodie Johnson
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/one-dozen-dissenting-second-opinions/
https://www.stress.org/stanford-professor-data-indicates-were-severely-overreacting-to-coronavirus
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2020/04/01/one-dozen-dissenting-second-opinions-geoffrey-luck/
If that were true, Americans would demand that we shut down the country every year on October 1st - when seasonal influenza begins.
According to the CDC, seasonal flu has killed between 24,000 and 62,000 Americans in the last 25 weeks.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
COVID-19 has killed 6,000 Americans in the last 10.5 weeks.
There is good news, by the way.
The “Positive Test Rate” for COVID-19 for high risk individuals in Washington state and California has been 8% or less for weeks.
The rate in New York City is more than 35% - which is actually less than the peak rate for seasonal influenza in NYC two months ago.
Bottom Line - the USA has destroyed trillions of dollars of hard earned wealth in a completely senseless effort to stop a severe influenza season.
Each “saved” life in 2020 will have cost tens of millions of dollars.
Once the death numbers don't come close to the projections and the masses realize we've caused an economic disaster unnecessarily, yes, opinions will change.
It's important Trump push to end the lockdown at the end of the month.