Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcellus
I think some outliers like Italy and that rest home in Washington freaked people the **** out and bunch of infectious disease specialist who have been waiting their whole career for "the big one" jumped in and started a snowball effect with their doomsday models.
This turned into a "better safe than sorry" mantra which frankly isn't justification for what we have done to the global economy. At least it sure doesn't look that way right now.
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It's been painful for sure. That being said, I think it's a somewhat good test run for more lethal pandemics. I was listening to Sam Harris (who has been really strident in arguments for greater response and people not taking this seriously enough), and he had an epidemiologist on there. Sam was really concerned at this epidemiologist wasn't concerned horribly concerned about COVID-19. The epidemiologist explained that when he gets worried about pandemics, he's thinking of viruses with a 50%+ mortality rate (which are out there) mutating to become highly infectious and hard to contain.
So, to him, COVID was scary, but it wasn't scary in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't mean we shouldn't take measure to combat it, and we definitely need to get our systems in place for when a "big one" comes. That, to me, all starts with MUCH better testing and detection capability. I still don't think we have actual good data on this thing due to our shitty testing capability (especially in states like Arkansas).