Coronavirus numbers, no one knows much yet — optimism, pessimism both reasonable

© 2020 Peter Free

 

05 March 2020

 

 

Are authorities and pundit-blabbers making pronouncements . . .

 

. . . based on unavoidably ambiguous COVID-19 data?

 

No one knows whether this illness is genuinely nastier than other notably serious respiratory epidemics.

 

 

We still do not know what the pool of actual cases is

 

Consequently, calculating accurate proportions for serious, critical and deadly illness — except inside contained environments like intensive care units — is challenging.

 

Certainly, we can estimate the in-hospital (or under-treatment) death rate of people we know about.

 

But that still leaves the presumably many, who never sought care and are now fine. The larger that group is, the lower the rates of "seriousness" go.

 

For example, for the elderly and immune-system-frail, was COVID-19 (or something else) the final nudge into the Great Beyond?

 

No one can be sure, yet.

 

And no one is likely to find out — not having had the investigative and autopsy time — while under the pressing pace of responses like China's and South Korea's.

 

 

This massive uncertainty leaves room for optimists to be optimists . . .

 

. . . and pessimists to be pessimists.

 

 

My objection to most COVID-19 suppression responses . . .

 

. . . has revolved around authorities saying that their goal is to stop the epidemic — and then doing obviously stupid things that run counter to their announced intentions.

 

The coronavirus pandemic's earliest result has been to show how poorly most nations cope with potentially harmful and easily spread infectious disease.

 

 

A minor example of laughably questionable thinking in the United States

 

CNBC interviewed former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, yesterday. They pressed him on the wisdom of reducing travel and preventing large gatherings in the United States.

 

Gottlieb took the position that travel should only be suppressed in areas with already known numbers of cases.

 

Obviously, that approach is ineffective — given how quickly and significantly this epidemic has already expanded from places where no one (at the time) knew it was.

 

 

Another spot of arguable foolishness

 

Authorities in many places are trying to come up with tolerable limits on the size of public gatherings. What's "safe" and what's not?

 

This, too, is asinine.

 

If I get on a plane of 200 people, am I really at less risk of catching ill than in attending an open-air concert of 5,000 people?

 

And why would a 1,000 person gathering in the Pacific Northwest be (or not be) presumably safer (or not) — than a 50,000 one in Desert Podunk, which clumps together visitors from all over the place?

 

Precisely because we do not know who has what, and where they are — any gathering significantly raises the likelihood of spread.

 

Once one has an undetected (highly contagious) infection, everyone one meets is at risk. In sense, we are already our own traveling mob.

 

Thus, the more operationally critical an organization's staff is to its operation, the less likely I (being a hypothetical CEO) would be to welcome their travel into the Virus-Spewing Herd.

 

 

I am not picking on Dr. Gottlieb

 

His unscientific irrationality (in this instance) is characteristic of authorities almost everywhere.


We humans think we know, and can control, more than we do and can.

 

And underlying everything American leadership says and does is an often unspoken concern about economic impact.

 

The same is true of China and South Korea's leadership.

 

Yet (significantly) both saw COVID-19 as dangerous enough to justify massively slowing their economies, so as to get on top of the virus's spread.

 

Their perceptions of appropriate proportionality should have given American leadership pause.

 

That this has not happened, seems more a sign of US arrogance than display of carefully evaluated wisdom.

 

 

The moral? — Fear and optimism — so far — have little solid evidence to base themselves on

 

Whether COVID-19 is actually "by the numbers" bad — compared to serious influenza pandemics — we do not yet know.

 

As a result, I have mainly been addressing the United States' pants-down posture in addressing this biological aspect of national security.

 

Were I in significant authority somewhere, I would address this zoonotic as an opportunity to practice preparedness. But actual leadership hasn't been.

 

Indeed, I forecast that this "episode" will create another corporatist and government-sponsored means to plunder the Public's pockets.

 

For instance, via extortionate vaccine and health insurance pricing. American elites always manipulate "reality" to fatten their wallets.

 

On this pillage-encouraging aspect of COVID-19's spread, I am pessimistic.