Anyone who doesn’t think this has the potential to be a big deal and worth worrying about doesn’t understand numbers. Couching this in some facts about the seasonal flu is all you need to reveal those that are ignorant. I’m not even going explain why. The comparisons to the flu have been eviscerated so many times in the month or more.
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On the contrary: his points were exactly correct. We're dealing with extremely biased estimators due to the cost and supply chain for the Covid virus test which is basically only given to very sick people, radically biasing the estimator high. At the very least, the estimator is extremely uncertain, and anyone who works with numbers should be acutely aware of this.
We're also dealing with people who completely forgot how hysterical people were over the swine flu, SARS, MERS and so on, which ultimately turned out to be nothingburgers. And a completely broken mass media system where pretty much all sources of news are about as reliable as the National Enquirer, and significantly more politically biased.
Flagging this was foolish and a further contribution to the mass hysteria.
> SARS, MERS and so on, which ultimately turned out to be nothingburgers
As a reminder, SARS and MERS were contained thanks to massive international effort to identify the spreaders, quarantines (including whole hospitals), and restrictions on air travel.
There's no question that quarantines prevent the spread of disease: there is plenty of question as to whether the disease justifies it; including in the cases of SARS and MERS.
For example: most new flus come out of China due to their agricultural practices; building a wall around China until they change the practices and isolating people in the rest of the world population who get it would actually remove the flu from the human experience. I believe flu killed 60,000 people in America last year. Are we ready to do that? Should only take a couple of years!
SARS and MERS killed ~1 in 10 and ~1 in 3 of the people who contracted them.
If a contagious disease with a 34% mortality rate don't justify containment. What does?
If given the choice between modern disease control and a wall I would choose modern disease control.
Your example of the flu is interesting. If humanity had modern resources to fight the ur-flu would it be worth the effort? How many lives would be saved over the generations if the flu hadn't become a common threat?