@snarbut said: Right, they aren’t that bad in
the setting of dramatic measures taken to stop the further spread of the
virus. That is not the same as saying they never would have been that
bad. I suppose this is my biggest point. Don’t use the fact that things
didn’t explode in the setting of drastic measures being taken to
downplay the seriousness of the situation."
Well that's just the problem. First, as you say, came the dire predictions. They did not pan out. Not anywhere close. You suggest that is because of the stringent response. But, as a physician you understand that because two things are true does not mean they are related. And in the case of stay at home orders, shutting down schools and closing businesses (but not Walmart of course) there is no solid evidence that it worked or even could work. Recent data of testing all the members of large groups is showing that large percentages of those testing positive were completely asymptomatic. Much larger than previously thought. This shows several things including that the virus is more pervasive than previously thought, less deadly than previously thought and probably around longer than thought. This, coupled with the fact that an increasing number of cases are being found in those who have strictly followed social isolation as well as new cases in nursing homes that have followed strict guidelines.
But there is an even much bigger problem in your reasoning here. As soon as nationwide measures were put in place and regularly thereafter the predictions continued to be spectacularly wrong even with the preventive measures taken into account. And by spectacularly wrong, I mean staggeringly wrong. Day after day and week after week. And yet, the policy makers continued to cite those numbers as the reason for their policies without ever addressing the failures of those projections. This continues today. I am following them in my state daily. They are simply bizarre and they have not come close. Not even once. Not even as it winds down here.
Further, the goal of lock down measures was said to be to "flatten the curve". In our state it was predicted that we would have peak cases sometime in mid May and could overwhelm the hospital capacity at that time. Then , suddenly in the third week of April the CDC and IHME announced that we had past our peak on or before April 11! AND, that there was no possibility whatsoever that we would come anywhere close to overwhelming the hospitals.
And given all that the rhetoric and the recommendations never changed! In fact, the rhetoric (social and regular media) escalated to a fever pitch. Then it incorporated virtue shaming to indicate that everyone should be wearing masks despite zero good evidence to that effect!
The point is that we based our response on projections that were NEVER and still are not accurate and some, like you seem to be, are claiming that measures based on those projections were effective when it is not clear that they were AND raise the specter of a population without herd immunity OR a vaccine.
When you put that in the balance with staggering blows to the economy, the healthcare sector, small businesses and the mortality and morbidity associated with social isolation then it is very clear that we might have handled things differently. You demur about a correct path and that is fine, and probably reasonable. But there have been many voices among top epidemiologists and researchers that the path we took was the wrong one. Those voices were there from the beginning.
They were shouted down and silenced.
