Oh, and don’t forget the media.

And politicians.

I know I asked the QOTW earlier today but I wanted to add this paper for your reading education.

Don’t panic I’ll offer some quotes.

“If you have a COVID-19 patient in your household, your risk of developing the infection is about 10%….If you were casually exposed to the virus in the workplace (e.g., you were not locked up in conference room for six hours with someone who was infected [like a hospital]), your chance of infection is about 0.5%”

And the key take on that,

According to Dr. Auwaerter, these transmission rates are very similar to the seasonal flu.

Newer analysis suggests that this viral rate is declining. According to Nobel Laureate and biophysicist Michael Levitt, the infection rate is declining –
“Every coronavirus patient in China infected on average 2.2 people a day — spelling exponential growth that can only lead to disaster. But then it started dropping, and the number of new daily infections is now close to zero.” He compared it to interest rates again: “even if the interest rate keeps dropping, you still make money. The sum you invested does not lessen, it just grows more slowly. When discussing diseases, it frightens people a lot because they keep hearing about new cases every day. But the fact that the infection rate is slowing down means the end of the pandemic is near.”

So is the lock down really necessary?
I feel the author hits the nail on the head with his recommendations (Read the article) especially this,

Local governments and politicians are inflicting massive harm and disruption with little evidence to support their draconian edicts. Every local government is in a mimetic race to one-up each other in authoritarian city ordinances to show us who has more “abundance of caution”. Politicians are competing, not on more evidence or more COVID-19 cures but more caution. As unemployment rises and families feel unbearably burdened already, they feel pressure to “fix” the situation they created with even more radical and “creative” policy solutions. This only creates more problems and an even larger snowball effect. The first place to start is to stop killing the patient and focus on what works.

Stay healthy my friends.

Update.

The original article link goes to a page no longer there. Curious as they say. It can still be reached through a cached page but there is a link that is working.

Zerohedge

Here is the message found at Instapundit.

THE PURPOSE OF STATISTICS IS INSIGHT, NOT NUMBERS: Evidence over hysteria — COVID-19.

I haven’t checked every number but they look plausible in the main, and match what people like Anthony Fauci are saying about things like case-fatality ratio.

Update (From Ed): After numerous flame wars on Twitter, Medium is now showing at the above URL an otherwise white page that reads “ERROR 410 This post is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules.”

However, the article can now be found at the (now Twitter-banned) Zero Hedge.

(Updated and bumped.)

I hate this sheltering in place crap. I think we are being panicked into doings things which are unnecessary and excessive to this extent. Prudent measures that should be taken for any flu season probably would have been good enough. And what of the destruction of the American economy? Is that worth it? Speaking as a person in two of the higher risk groups I don’t think so.

So I ask you gentle readers, what do you think? Was this trip really necessary?