The people we pay to be experts about contagious disease have been wrong fairly often about Covid-19. A number of pundits have beat up on them for this, questioning their expertise, their morals, and independence.
If you'd been asking about an Ebola outbreak, or perhaps yellow fever, you'd have gotten better answers. Those diseases are known quantities, they have a track record.
Covid-19 is brand new - freshly created or mutated or newly jumped from an animal vector - we aren't positive which, though we have suspicions. No track record exists, the experts were guessing, based on somewhat similar diseases like the various influenzas.
To some extent, Covid-19 is dissimilar to the flu, and to that extent the experts have been wrong. I'm pretty sure a check of the transcripts would show they've indicated they are giving their best guesses and that this disease could take a different track.
We've chosen not to hear, or to discount those denials of certainty. That's on us, it's our screw-up, our insistence on certainty where none exists.
Don't blame the experts. They really don't know if non-symptomatic cases can transmit the disease to others. If so, is it easily or with difficulty? They don't know to what extent a prior bout of the disease grants immunity, and if so, for how long.
They've observed that cigarette smokers seem to be less susceptible to Covid-19 but have no idea why. Also that those with a vitamin D deficiency may be more susceptible, as are those with type A blood. Why? Nobody knows yet.
So we ask for their best estimate, and get mad at them when it turns out to be wrong. At this stage most of what they say are estimates, of which a fair proportion will be wrong. If you can't handle the ambiguity, don't listen to them, tell yourself nobody knows and try not to do something stupid as a result.
