Medical experts and the Coronavirus

Some people have pointed out that the early projections of deaths by medical experts were wildly overestimated.  When the virus first hit we heard numbers as high as one to two million unless stringent measures of “social distancing” and a shut down of normal economic activity were in place.

So we shut down, we wore masks, we stayed six feet apart, and the death toll is still under 100,000.  Now many people are saying the medical experts were wrong, and the coronavirus wasn’t so bad.

What they seem to have forgotten is that it was very bad ion places where the virus spread before measures were in place to contain it.  We have some controlled experiments where distancing was impractical or not possible.  If we look at prisons, nursing homes, Indian reservations, and battleships, we can see what would have happened if we had continued with business as usual.  The reason the death toll was so low was because we followed the guidelines.  

That’s if 85,000 is considered “low.”  We should also remember we may experience an increase as people quit wearing masks, breath freely, and exercise their rights as free American citizens to ignore medical experts and infect themselves and others around them.