Hi Allan -
Several months ago, you insisted that I apologize to you when the total worldwide death toll for COVID-19 turned out to be less than 5,000 people.
Five thousand. Worldwide.
For some reason I don't seem to be able to find that reply anymore.
First off, your article here concentrates on the death rates, calling the doom-and-gloom projections "wildly wrong". The difference, sir, is that instead of being concentrated around the elderly, the infections are now more often found among those 45 and younger.
They're younger, and so they're more likely to recover. That, sir, is why the morality rate isn't shooting up quite as quickly as the infection rate.
Second, you didn't address the rate of hospitalizations. The latest info I can find shows there's currently about 286,000 people hospitalized. "But that's less than one-thousandth of our population!" you say? Thing is, this does not include those who have recovered or died.
More importantly, the key about that figure is that the *average* hospital stay for COVID patients is 22.4 days. That is freaking HUGE...because ALL such patients are contagious and must be kept in strict quarantine to keep from infecting staff or other patients.
Third, the statistics you use refer the nation as a whole, and so do NOT adequately address what is happening in Florida, Texas, and Arizona. As of this morning, there's 55 (fifty-five!) hospitals in Florida that have NO ICU space available (thanks mostly to that average stay of 22.4 days). In Texas and Arizona, some hospitals are having to order refrigerated trucks to serve as overflow morgues. In McAllen, Texas, they're putting together a committee to determine which patients are least likely to survive, so they can send them home to die, to make room for more patients. Gee, where have we heard the term "death panels" before?
If we're overreacting to COVID, please tell us the last time we had full ICU's and refrigerated trucks for overflow morgues in multiple states.
Fourth, your article does not address the *long-term* effects...because those effects can be serious and may well be permanent, thus placing that much more of a burden on health care systems and on the taxpayers i.e. more people will be unable to work. So far, there have been 4M documented cases (though the reality is likely much higher). If only one-tenth suffer long-term disabilities, that's still another major drain on our health care system.
Fifth, a significant percentage of those dying are 40-50 years old...which means they likely have children - some in grade school, but many will be teenagers...and they'll have lost the one giving them the guidance they need as they grow. This is going to have long-term - and directly adverse - effects on our society.
Lastly, everything that has happened has been *with* modern health care, masks (mostly), and social distancing (mostly). We're already looking at 200K dead by late September. If we all just got back to work without a vaccine, how many more would be infected? How many more would they infect in turn?
How many is too many for you?
Allan, looking at your articles, you're highly intelligent - and that's not telling you anything you don't already know. There's a lot of things you and I agree on. But even the most intelligent can be "wildly wrong" about things (less than 5,000 dead worldwide, you inferred). Remember, it's NOT just the media shouting to the high heavens about the pandemic, but the virologists and epidemiologists.
Yes, the media loves clicks - that how they make their money, and I quite agree with you that the media freaking *loves* to blow crap out of proportion.
But the raison d'etre of virologists and epidemiologists is to save lives - that's what they *want* to do. You don't have to listen to the media...but it would certainly behoove you to listen to the ones who've built their lives around studying viruses and epidemics. They're telling you what you need to know. Listen to them.
