The Arguments For Why COVID-19 Isn’t That Bad
Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash
May 8 2020
The virus isn’t that bad? Easy for me to say, you might say.
I live in Australia, where we are just slipping out of a comparatively COVID-spared summer, including the easing of a mild to medium lockdown that for introverts like myself has felt more like a blessing than a burden. In fact, the sleepy coastal town where I live still has 0 confirmed cases (touch wood).
(New Years Eve 2020 update: still no cases)
So yes, easy for me to suggest that COVID-19 may not actually be that bad. Although, if anyone was going to be able to say it, why not someone obsessed with following the situation virtually who is at the same time almost completely detached from its consequences in reality. It would admittedly be better if they were a doctor with some trained expertise in any field relating to a pandemic, however I do have a PhD, and in that sense hold the unused title of a Doctor, which I choose to invoke now.
And I’m not actually saying it isn’t that bad. What I’m going to do is present the arguments for why it isn’t that bad and try to leave my own opinions out of it (even if you might think you can deduce my opinion just from the fact that I am writing this article).
Why would I do this? Why would I open myself up to the wrath of the Medium community (or at least the small percentage that care what I have to say) who seem almost universally to have accepted this pandemic as a truly unique threat to the functioning of our society?
My cards are already on the table: I’ve written in defence of that truly despicable intellectual scourge that is conspiracy theory. I support investigation of these theories not because they are always or even mostly right, but as a form of intellectual rebellion to the increasing disparagement, censorship, and blatant removal of information and opinions that do not align with the mainstream narrative on important issues. If I lived in America, I assume I would be expressing my love for the First Amendment.
I also don’t believe any situation offers an excuse to become more divided. Accepting division is a moral cop-out; there is always room for compassion and understanding of differing opinions, regardless of how much you disagree with them or how much you dislike the person who holds them.
So I have sought quite extensively to understand the alternative views of the nature of this pandemic. I liked to think I was already fairly woke before this (hey, don’t we all though!), but I have now had my eyes opened to a range of new perspectives: not just on the virus in question, but also China and their role in the origins of the virus; on the nature of viruses, as well as our own health and immune systems; on the ease by which supposedly objective scientific information can be manipulated and then misused by someone with an agenda; and on incredibly divisive issues like 5G and vaccines.
But I’m not game enough to talk about any of them. I’d rather just present the arguments for a theory that really should be palatable with and bring optimism to everyone: the Corona/COVID-19 virus (I’m just gonna go with CV) is not as bad as we thought.
Now, a few necessary clarifications up front, which may not be necessary but, given the state of black or white discourse that largely exists on CV at the moment, it’s better to be safe. Saying it’s not that bad doesn’t mean that it isn’t still something to take seriously. It doesn’t mean we should all go back to our normal lives straight away and blindly embrace herd immunity. It doesn’t mean we were systematically lied to across all levels of Government, Media and the Medical Establishment. And, just to be very clear, it doesn’t mean the virus doesn’t exist, that people aren’t dying, and that the risk being taken by frontline workers isn’t real. It simply means it wasn’t as bad as it was and is being made out to be. That’s it.
Mortality Rate
The arguments start with how lethal CV actually is, in terms of the proportion of people who end up dying from it after becoming infected. It seems now pretty well accepted that CV is considerably more infectious than originally thought (see studies here and here and a short summary and discussion in this interview) meaning it is much more wide spread in the population than we thought. Taking into account these extra numbers of low or asymptomatic carriers brings down the mortality rate significantly: likely between the ranges of 0.1% to 0.4% according to this aggregating site.
Now, this is where the discussion comes out of the fringes and into the establishment, as this apparently low mortality rate has clearly been known by those authorities in the know for a while. For example, on the 19th of March, the UK Government (largely unnoticed) downgraded CV from a ‘high consequence infectious disease’, due primarily to the available information pointing to a scaled-back mortality rate.
Even before this however, a paper was published on the 28th of February in the New England Journal of Medicine, whose lead author was none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci, the CV spokesman of the US medical establishment no less. Noting the likely high asymptomatic spread of the virus that has lead to high numbers of un-reported cases, the paper also suggests the fatality rate to be “considerably less than 1%”. The paper even goes as far as saying that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza”.
Wait… is Fauci one of those crazy people trying to compare CV to the flu?
Total Deaths
Then there is the dispute over the total number of deaths attributed to CV.
Many people are claiming that this number is being inflated. The suggestion is that doctors and hospitals have been told by the CDC and various other agencies to classify any death for someone who has tested positive to CV or presumed to have CV as dying from CV, regardless of other conditions they have had. You can find discussions of CV death numbers that support this conclusion here and here.
The CDC, for their part, is clear on their website that ‘probable’ CV deaths are being recorded alongside confirmed CV deaths, with probable being defined in very vague terms (at least for this medical pleb). Some fudging of the numbers also appears to have been admitted recently by the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
You may even have heard of a notorious video by a Dr. Erickson and Dr. Massihi, which was deleted by YouTube after 5 million views: a truly spectacular own goal that hopefully even those who disagree with the video’s premise would have sighed at (you can find a follow up interview with one of the doctors here). The Doctors were for the most part basically making the same claims about overall infection rates and mortality rates. They appear to have earned the ire of the establishment and the rapture of the fringes, however, when they decided to go the extra step of calling for the reopening of the economy.
A similar argument is also made here by a doctor from The Bronx in New York City, which is notable given this is essentially ground zero for the virus across the whole world right now. You can also find arguments that the consequences of the lockdowns are outweighing the benefits here, here and here.
Central to these arguments for lifting lockdowns is the impact that such a total focus on CV might be having on other non-CV illnesses. No-one is arguing that these lockdowns aren’t having a negative impact on mental health, as well as increasing instances of domestic violence and abuse. There are also estimates from various outlets that many people are likely dying at home from completely unrelated illnesses like heart attacks and strokes due to a reluctance or inability to use the health system. This alternative ‘second wave’ may prove to be more fatal than the virus itself in many places.
Other Health Risk Factors
Perhaps the biggest mystery of CV is the discrepancy of its impact across different countries and localities. It is this unknown — along with the high rate on infection — that has many people rightly erring on the side of caution and conservatism in judging how we should be responding. What does seem safe to take away is that the impact of CV is strongly determined by the environment and existing health risk factors that are present in any single location.
For example, there is air pollution. The Guardian recently put together a summary of the various studies linking air pollution to CV deaths. In China, researchers had already declared pneumonia to be rising to epidemic proportions in many developed cities before CV became a thing. It is likely that many of the deaths attributed to CV were continuations of this epidemic caused in large part by the deteriorating air quality in major Chinese cities (not to mention incredibly high rates of smoking in China, upwards of 40% of male adults!). Similar arguments have been made about other hotspots such as Northern Italy and Iran.
The main risk factor at play seems to be other viruses or respiratory conditions that might be exacerbated by CV, most notably the good ol’ flu. This is probably something that has been under-appreciated by many (including me) who tend to downplay this pesky virus as something to just ‘push through’: the flu is extremely dangerous for many parts of the population. Two years ago, it was estimated by the CDC that over 60,000 people died from the flu in peak season in the United States. This summary suggests that serious overloads of hospitals during peak flu season was already common before this pandemic season.
Given that the peak of the outbreak in the northern hemisphere occurred during normal flu season, and given the general similarity in symptoms, many are arguing that deaths from the flu and related respiratory illnesses like pneumonia are being attributed to CV.
These people are also saying we should therefore be judging the severity of this outbreak by summing deaths from CV and flu-ish illnesses compared to total mortality rates of previous flu seasons. While the US has already passed this mark, this page argues that the death rate of many European countries, including the UK, is high but not out of range of the worst previous flu seasons.
While I’m sure you have little sympathy left available, this link between CV and the flu does leave me slightly apprehensive about what lies ahead for sunny southern hemisphere countries like Australia and New Zealand, particularly as we bask in a not so subtle smugness about how we are faring, despite flu season waiting just around the corner.
So there you go. A non-exhaustive (but for many people probably an exhausting) summary of the arguments that CV isn’t that bad.
Shoot the messenger if you want, and feel free to point out things I may have misinterpreted or didn’t properly back up with sources, but also keep in mind the intent of this article: as a hopefully neutral presentation of opinions you likely disagree with but at least now have the opportunity to better understand.
There are articles all over Medium that are happy to callously dismiss the intellect and morality of those with differing opinions: seemingly resigning us to a societal division with no foreseeable means of resolution, and that if we are lucky stays at the level of culture war and not beyond. See this article as an act of protest against this failure of humility that exists across political and ideological lines.