By Christopher Harper
Despite all of the information swirling around about Covid-19, I still have a bunch of unanswered questions.
Why were the models so wrong?
In the space of about a week starting April 2, two revisions on April 5 and 8 have utterly discredited the model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Just days ago, the estimates called for the likelihood of 100,000 deaths, with as many as 240,000 a real possibility. On April 8, the projected cumulative deaths were slashed to about 60,000, with the upper range again cut to about 126,000. In less than a week, the model proved to be off by more than 33 percent.
Remember when the Imperial College of London “experts” said there might be more than two million dead in the United States?
Why can’t news organizations do the simple math necessary to tell the true story of the virus?
The overall infection rate and death rate do not accurately show the nature of the pandemic. In order to compare apples to apples, you divide the number of those infected or dead by the total population of the country.
That shows that the United States is doing a good job when compared with other countries. But an accurate view of the pandemic wouldn’t fit the meme that Trump has been doing a bad job.
Why did New York City experience such a high rate of infection?
Other cities had high incidents of the disease but nothing to compare with New York. At first, it was thought that the virus had come from China. Now it appears that the virus affecting New York and New Jersey was a mutation from Europe. At first, it seemed that the outbreak had started in New Rochelle in the suburbs, but the minority and Hasidic Jewish communities were hard hit. It would be worthwhile to trace the path of the virus in the New York metropolitan area.
Why did Los Angeles have such a low rate of infection?
The rate was much lower than in many parts of the country. Perhaps the dependence on driving and a lack of a public transit system actually helps in a pandemic.
Why did the developing world have such a low rate of infection?
As one Australian newspaper put it: “How does a palm-fringed lagoon in Fiji or New Caledonia sound or perhaps a dive resort in Papua New Guinea, a beachfront hotel in East Timor? The more adventurous might like to try Latvia, Slovakia, Vietnam, or Kuwait. If there weren’t travel bans, of course.”
Why did Germany, which clamped down early, have such a low rate of infection like Sweden, which did virtually nothing?
Other questions have obvious answers: stupidity.
Why does anyone think the data from China is accurate?
Why did some states close liquor stores?
Why was it all right to use Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome in 2012 while the Wuhan Virus was racist?