‘As Coronavirus Pandemic Takes hold, We are Making Decisions Without Reliable Data’

“The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco,” wrote John Ionaddis, professor of medicine, epidemiology, population health, biomedical data science, and statistics at Stanford University. “In the U.S., for example, so far this season 1,073,976 specimens have been tested and 222,552 (20.7%) have tested positive for influenza. In the same period, the estimated number of influenza-like illnesses is between 36,000,000 and 51,000,000, with an estimated 22,000 to 55,000 flu deaths.”

Three recent headlines seem to best capture the nationwide hysteria over Coronavirus:

MIT biologist says fear mongering on coronavirus will go down as biggest fraud to manipulate economies.

Israeli virologist urges world leaders to calm public, slams ‘unnecessary panic.’

A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.

“Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT scientist and researcher on the human immune system, is one the most respected experts who think the media and the ‘Deep State’ are doing the world a disservice by exaggerating the impact of the virus. He said it’s time to stop scaring people and start talking about immune health.”

“Dr. Shiva may be right. Back in October 2009, the H1N1 killed 1,000 people in the United States, including almost 100 children before President Obama later declared national emergency for the virus. At the time, the media hysteria was not as high as it is today. Earlier today, we also published a story using data from CDC and WHO, that tells a different story from what the media has been saying.”

Ayyadurai Tweeted: “As an MIT PhD in Biological Engineering who studies & does research nearly every day on the Immune System, the #coronavirus fear mongering by the Deep State will go down in history as one of the biggest fraud to manipulate economies, suppress dissent, & push MANDATED Medicine!”

“Prof. Jihad Bishara, the director of the Infectious Disease Unit at Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital, said that some of the steps being taken in Israel and abroad were very important, but the virus is not airborne, most people who are infected will recover without even knowing they were sick, the at-risk groups are now known, and the global panic is unnecessary and exaggerated.”

“I’ve been in this business for 30 years,” Bishara said in a Channel 12 interview. “I’ve been through MERS, SARS, Ebola, the first Gulf war and the second, and I don’t recall anything like this. There’s unnecessary, exaggerated panic. We have to calm people down.”

“At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected,” Professor John Ionaddis wrote. “Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact.”

At WattsUpWithThat, Willis Eschenbach wrote: “We had a perfect petri-dish coronavirus disease (COVID-19) experiment with the cruise ship ‘Diamond Princess.’ That’s the cruise ship that ended up in quarantine for a number of weeks after a number of people tested positive for the coronavirus. I got to wondering what the outcome of the experiment was.”

“As you might imagine, before they knew it was a problem, the epidemic raged on the ship, with infected crew members cooking and cleaning for the guests, people all eating together, close living quarters, lots of social interaction, and a generally older population. Seems like a perfect situation for an overwhelming majority of the passengers to become infected.”

“And despite that, some 83% (82.7% – 83.9%) of the passengers never got the disease at all.”

“If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe,” said Professor John P.A. Ioannidis.