Was I wrong about coronavirus? Even the world's best scientists can't tell me

The Guardian ^ | Thu 2 Apr 2020 | Simon Jenkins

[daniel1212]

I was wrong. Or I think I was. I heard Boris Johnson on 3 March leap into war mode and publish 28 pages of emergency plans, should coronavirus take hold in Britain. There were reports that “half a million could die”. I was sceptical.

I noted that in 1999 it had been said that BSE “could kill” half a million. Sars in 2003 had a “25% chance of killing tens of millions”. In 2009, the British government said 65,000 “could die” of swine flu...Everywhere people were told to “listen to the science”...

Ministers were clearly panicked by a report from Imperial College London under Prof Neil Ferguson, the most alarming document I have read outside the realm of nuclear war planning. In a welter of graphs and statistics, it rubbished the government’s mitigation strategy and advised full-scale “suppression”. Even if the virus was suppressed, the report warned it could return and would be as bad or even worse. The report estimated that deaths could range from 20,000 in the best-case scenario to the familiar half-million in the worst..

The same weekend Johnson did his volte face, an Oxford University team led by Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology, pointed out that figures on the morbidity of Covid-19 were virtually meaningless in the absence of testing..

The maverick – but frequently accurate – pandemic forecaster at Stanford University John Ioannidis called the data collected so far on the pandemic “utterly unreliable ”. It would one day, he claimed, be regarded as “an evidence fiasco”...

Yet more scepticism was expressed by a former NHS pathologist, John Lee , who suggested deaths of elderly people were being very differently recorded in different countries. How many were really dying “of” Covid-19 rather than of something else “with” it?...Science was plainly suffering herd disagreement...

[FreedomPoster]

Eisenhower in his farewell address warned of the military-industrial complex, which everyone knows because the Left latched on to it.

He also said;

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.“

So there was just as much a warning about Big Science. What we’re seeing with “climate change” is a great example.

[livius]

I think one of the things that set off the panic was actually seeing how the Chinese Communists locked down their people. Stories of people being welded into their buildings or even apartments, screaming to get out, etc. certainly made the fear a lot worse. People were afraid it was going to happen here.

And I’m not sure the more moderate approach would have been abandoned here or in other countries if it hadn’t been for the wildly inflated projections coming out of various “experts.” It was a total fear factor response. Of course, now they’re all quietly backing away from their numbers.

[daniel1212]

High blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are so commonplace everyone likely knows somebody with at least one of these maladies.They are also the “underlying conditions” most associated with severe cases of COVID-19 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/these-underlying-conditions-make-coronavirus-more-severe-and-they-are-surprisingly-common/ Top underlying health conditions in COVID-19 deaths include diabetes, obesity As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across Louisiana and deaths jump by record numbers, many deaths are attributed to underlying health conditions. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/top-underlying-health-conditions-in-covid-19-deaths-include-diabetes-obesity/ar-BB11OhMe Age is not the only risk for severe coronavirus disease WASHINGTON — Older people remain most at risk of dying as the new coronavirus continues its rampage around the globe, but they’re far from the only ones vulnerable. One of many mysteries: Men seem to be faring worse than women. https://www.effinghamdailynews.com/news/age-is-not-the-only-risk-for-severe-coronavirus-disease/article_a95ca128-738f-11ea-b7f1-979100d2700f.html

Thanks and see How dangerous is the COVID-19 coronavirus?

[daniel1212]

It will be interesting to compare the results of countries that have shut down with those that just practiced sensible controls. Will there be a significant difference in the death rate? This of course is something we won’t know until this is all over.

The author himself stated,'

There is clearly more than one side to this argument. Will Sweden prove better or worse than adjacent Denmark? One day the mother of all inquiries will tell us. For the present, all we know is that the world is conducting a massive real-time experiment in state authority.

Personally, to be truly realistic, I think all the deaths resulting from the economic collapse to be caused by the shutdowns should be attributed to COVID...

Some of the MSM will likely do just that in order to justify the hysteria and its response itself.

[Starboard]

Scientists must really be whores with the way they exaggerate for money on “climate change” and on Chinese coronavirus.

***************

There’s an old expression that says “Where you stand is where you sit”. In other words we tend to view and rationalize things from our own perspective and self interest.

[daniel1212]

Jobless Claims Hit 3.3 Million in the Last Report. This Week’s Will Probably Be Worse. - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/01/upshot/coronavirus-jobless-claims-forecast-predictions.html

[Starboard]

You’re right. Its always safer to err on the high side. Underestimating will generally get you into trouble.

[daniel1212]

“Herd disagreement”. LOL

Yes, i saw that parody.

[9YearLurker]

You’re not living in the middle of it—or you wouldn’t be so cavalier.

If anything we should have shut down the relevant travel more thoroughly and sooner. Then we might have not had to shut everything else down.

[zeugma]

If, on the other hand, you predict large numbers of deaths, and everyone gets scared and takes drastic precautions, you can say, see, the precautions worked! We really dodged a bullet there...

Yup. It's a no-lose scenario for the bedwetters. Meanwhile, we all pay the price for their cowardice.

[daniel1212]

These are always the worst-case scenarios,

No, the extreme numbers are not always the worst-case scenarios.

Coronavirus Could Kill 200,000 in U.S. in Best Case Scenario ... .. 5 days ago - Projections of 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths is a best case scenario ...

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/best-case-and-worst-case-coronavirus-forecasts-are-very-far-apart/: On Tuesday, Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx — members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force — estimated that COVID-19 could kill 100,000 to 240,000 Americans even if all federal guidelines are followed closely. They believe there were between 289,000 and 12.8 million infections, with 1.1 million being the consensus estimate, implying that the experts think that only about 12 percent of all infections have been reported.