Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason, asks in a recent editorial: “Is Preventing COVID-19 Deaths Worth a Severe Recession? The Answer Depends on Controversial Assumptions About the Epidemic’s Lethality”
Sullum notes that some economists are asking what the mainstream media will not — does the data support wrecking the economy?
Sullum writes, “When ‘the best estimates’ for COVID-19’s [mortality rate] range from 0.1 percent to 1 percent, as Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir told reporters earlier this month—or possibly from 0.05 percent to 1 percent, as Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis suggests—it is hard to say with any confidence whether these measures can be rationally justified, or for how long.”
Secretary Giroir, tapped by the White House to be a new “czar” housed at the Department of Health and Human Services, has led the way in questioning the CDC’s numbers based on its accepted coronavirus testing system.
After the White House press briefing in which President Trump presented Giroir as the new Czar, Trump tweeted, “Changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large-scale basis.”
Trump later touted several new measures he has directed his administrated to take in addressing “flaws in America’s coronavirus testing system.”
Despite early reporting, some now say that too many assumptions are being made to justify driving our economy into the ground.
Watch the video as Liz Wheeler of One America Network asks seven questions we need to be answered about COVID-19.
