Science and Data

Issues and Insights:

“This isn’t to say that no action was needed to cope with this uncharted virus. That’s not the argument any of these researchers are making. What they are saying is that the lockdowns weren’t based on sound science, and that far less intrusive measures would likely have been just as effective, if not more so, without destroying the economy. To be sure, there are studies claiming that the lockdowns reduced infections and saved lives. But as JP Morgan’s Kolanovic noted, ‘Unlike rigorous testing of potential new drugs, lockdowns were administered with little consideration that they might not only cause economic devastation but potentially more deaths than COVID-19 itself.’ Where’s the ‘party of science’ when you need it?”

It was one thing to shut the world down for a couple weeks in March, to "flatten the curve", it's entirely another to keep it shut down indefinitely.

Bloomberg even has charts:

While not a gauge of whether the decisions taken were the right ones, nor of how strictly they were followed, the analysis gives a clear sense of each government’s strategy for containing the virus. Some — above all Italy and Spain — enforced prolonged and strict lockdowns after infections took off. Others — especially Sweden — preferred a much more relaxed approach. Portugal and Greece chose to close down while cases were relatively low. France and the U.K. took longer before deciding to impose the most restrictive measures.

But, as our next chart shows, there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities — a measure that looks at the overall number of deaths compared with normal trends.

I wonder what the correlation coefficient is on that trendline in the last graph. 

PJMedia crunches numbers from the CDC:

The CDC does caution that the numbers are likely to change with new data, but considering we’ve gone from 3.4 percent to 2.0 percent to now 0.26 percent. The more data we get, the lower the numbers get. So, I’m thinking it might get even lower.

But, the bigger takeaway from this is that the early doomsday predictions about the coronavirus were all wrong. Everything that justified the lockdowns and the shutting down of our economy was wrong. We need to open this country back up.

All the data are telling us the same thing.  So why is so much of the country still locked down?

Lockdowns are no longer justified by science; rather, they are purely political.

Update, 5/25/20:  This Twitter post (on Instagram) makes the "science" argument pretty silly:

New York City is allowing you to hang out on the beaches, but not swim.  California is allowing you to swim, but not hang out on the beaches.  Both claim science is guiding their policies.

And then there's this:

The CDC's New 'Best Estimate' Implies a COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate Below 0.3%
That rate is much lower than the numbers used in the horrifying projections that shaped the government response to the epidemic.

The March projections were not only horrifying, they were horribly wrong.  Science would tell us to adjust our actions based on better data.  What do you call it when you refuse to accept anything other than your own preconceived notions, refuse to accept science?  Atheists, help me out with this one.