Time To Get Serious

"Double doc" (MD, PhD) Matthew Meyerson from the Harvard Medical School - 3 impressive credentials - has written sobering words about the Covid-19 pandemic specifically for the readers of Power Line, of which website he is a fan. I summarize below something you should probably read in its entirety.

1. Covid-19 is very highly transmissible. There are numerous news stories of a single event where probably a single infected individual caused dozens or hundreds of infections and numerous deaths.

2. Covid-19 causes severe illness in medical professionals and otherwise healthy young people. (snip) This almost never happens in other diseases.

3. It is hard to compare deaths from COVID-19 to deaths from influenza. The data on influenza deaths are of limited value as we do not routinely test for influenza virus infection or other respiratory infections.

4. I do not believe that we are overreacting to COVID-19. (snip) A stronger response today could still save far more people than a more mild response.

5. Until we have treatments and vaccines, preventing transmission is the only way to go. Every blocked transmission could be a life saved—or many lives, given how transmissible the virus is.

When my mom was a little girl in 1917, she had the Spanish flu and was so sick all her pretty straight hair fell out. It grew back in curly and stayed that way the rest of her long life.

Pandemics are no joke; that one wasn't, neither is this. Survivors will be talking about Covid-19 for the next century.