Experts demolish studies suggesting COVID-19 is no worse than flu

[quickgun_murugun]

Experts demolish studies suggesting COVID-19 is no worse than flu
 

How dangerous is this?

We dig into the details of the studies below, but it's important to note that neither of them have been published in a scientific journal, nor have they gone through standard peer-review for scientific vetting. Instead, they have been posted online in draft form (a commonplace occurrence amid a rapidly evolving pandemic that inclines researchers to have fast access to data, however uncertain).

The findings seemed to support minority arguments that COVID-19 may be no worse than seasonal flu (a leading cause of death in the US) and that the restrictive mitigation efforts currently strangling the economy may be unnecessary. In fact, three researchers who co-authored the new studies have publicly made those exact arguments.

 

In a controversial opinion piece in the biomedical news outlet STAT, population health researcher John Ioannidis, at Stanford, argued back in mid-March that the mortality rate of COVID-19 may be much lower than expected, potentially making current lockdowns “totally irrational.” Health policy researchers Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, also both at Stanford, made a similar argument in The Wall Street Journal at the end of March. They called current COVID-19 fatality estimates—in the range of 2 percent to 4 percent—“deeply flawed.”

 

The aim of the studies

Both studies primarily aimed to estimate how many people in each of two counties had been infected at some point with SARS-CoV-2. This is an extremely important endeavor because it can tell us the true extent of infection, help guide efforts trying to stop transmission, and better assess the full spectrum of the COVID-19 disease severity and the fatality rate.

Because diagnostic testing has been so limited in the US and many COVID-19 cases appear to present with mild or even no symptoms, researchers expect the true number of people who have been infected to be much higher than we know based on confirmed cases. There is no debate about that. But just how much higher is the subject of considerable debate.

 

Full article 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/experts-demolish-studies-suggesting-covid-19-is-no-worse-than-flu/?amp=1

[sri_india]

please open economy   @TRUMP

[quickgun_murugun]

13 hours ago, sri_india said:

please open economy   @TRUMP

Okay