Over Hyped?

The message I got from the following piece in Mishpacha is that this corona thing is being overplayed. Not the biggest deal. We should really continue on as normal and get back to work.

Dangerous and misleading message. 

645,606 cases diagnosed. [Millions more likely undiagnosed]. 

Almost 30,000 deaths.

All within the last few weeks. Just like the flu? NOT!!

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We are currently guinea pigs of governmental policies that must balance between widespread severe economic pain and the potential loss of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives around the globe. While the choice of life over bankrupt businesses may seem an obvious one, Guido Calabresi, one of America’s preeminent legal scholars, points out in Tragic Choices that life does not trump all, or at least not always.

For instance, the United States could reduce traffic fatalities by tens of thousands each year by reducing the speed limit to 25 mph and enforcing it with lengthy prison terms for violators. Yet the public would never tolerate such a life-saving measure because of the dramatic inconvenience and societal disruption it would inflict.

Yet while governments are rightly spooked by the potential for the collapse of heath care systems, the preventative measures being imposed will also exact a huge toll in livelihoods lost, and small businesses destroyed, not to mention the resultant depression and familial breakdown.

And the decisions are being made in a climate of hysteria. CNN, for instance, proclaims a “pandemic unprecedented in modern times.” Modern times would include the Spanish Flu of a century ago, which is estimated to have claimed 20 to 50 million lives worldwide. And yet today, total deaths from COVID-19 worldwide number less than 7,000, and of those all but a thousand have been in three countries --China, Italy, and Iran. (The epicenters in the latter two countries were in areas where large numbers of Chinese workers were employed on Chinese funded projects.) China’s apparent success in bringing the rate of new infections down to near zero is the most optimistic news of all.

The current hysteria is fueled, in part, by the natural human tendency to catastrophize. A bit of historical perspective may provide some calm. Ever since Thomas Malthus propounded his iron law of population growth in 1798 – to wit, population tends to expand geometrically and the food supply arithmetically – we have heard dire warnings of mass starvation. Yet increased agricultural productivity has consistently outstripped population growth. During the 1980s AIDS epidemic, major publications published dire warnings that it would soon spread to the entire population. It didn’t. In 2003, the prestigious journal New Scientist headlined, “SARS Could Eventually Kill Millions.” It killed 774, notes science writer Michael Fumento, before eventually disappearing forever one hot July.

Further heightening the hysteria is a total lack of the information needed to make the tragic choices involved. Dr. John Ioannidis, professor of medicine, epidemiology, biomedical data science and statistics at Stanford University calls the current situation a “once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.” We cannot know the lethality of the virus without knowing how many people are infected: Are the reported cases just the most serious? And if they are, do they understate the total number of cases by a factor of 3 or 300? Yet only when we know how widespread the virus is can we know how lethal it is – the more widespread the less lethal.

Projecting the Diamond Princess experience, where seven out of 700 infected passengers, or 1 percent, died, onto the age distribution of the US population, writes Ioannidis, yields a death rate of .125 percent. But given the small sample, the actual rate could be anywhere from five times higher to five times lower.

Long before COVID-19 appeared on the scene, there were other known coronaviruses that can cause fatality rates of up to 8 percent in nursing home facilities, and which are responsible for between 3 percent and 11 percent of hospital admissions every winter for respiratory complaints. Had COVID-19 not been identified as a new virus, it is quite possible that this would have been thought of as nothing more than a bit worse flu season than usual. Estimated flu deaths in the US this year number between 22,000 and 55,000.

Among the many things we do not know, Ioaniddis writes in conclusion, is the long-term consequences of social distancing measures and lockdown measures to the economy, society, and mental health.

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We are wise enough to follow the medical establishment and do what they say to the letter and not get complacent which could cost more lives. The economy? That is Hashem's job to take care of. We don't risk literally killing ourselves to continue working.