Yeah i hope you’re right but I’d rather we overreacted a bit now then chilled later if things weren’t as bad as feared. I don’t think anyone’s saying it’s the Black Death but they want to avoid hospitals being overwhelmed and being unable to cope with people with other serious issues.
Like I say, I could be totally wrong - I am absolutely not a doctor or health professional, and I will comply with whatever decision is made. I’m categorically not saying it isn’t real, or isn’t potentially very serious and harmful, and so on. I’m just saying that given the absolutely unprecedented response going on around the world, they’re going to have to be right about this. If this turns out to be another wet fart then the damage they’re going to do to public trust is enormous.
It’s the first big health crisis of the Internet age, with all the extra scrutiny and discussion that brings. But hospitals in Italy are struggling and I really wouldn’t want to have some other serious health issue there now if there was a risk of no bed being available
Swine flu fell into a similar category (social media was very much around at the time) and the situation was sensationalised on news bulletins, and splashed across the front pages of papers for weeks on end. There was talk of cancelling public events and all sorts back then as well. Again, I am not saying this means this situation is all a load of guff, but there are only so many times that you can tell people to get into the bomb shelter and cover their heads, only to be met with relative silence and barely a tremor, before people stop listening. I hope this is all an overreaction because if it is then the reality will mean that far, far less people got sick or passed away altogether that had been suggested, and that’s the priority first and foremost. Nobody wants to see it go the other way.
One of the problems here is that if the best possible action is taken, then the number of severe cases and deaths will minimised, or spread out in time, and everyone will say “see it was all just a big out of proportion alarm”” I knew it wouldn’t be that bad”. I’d prefer to be in the situation of not knowing how big a bullet we have dodged, rather than not act and discover exactly how big a bullet it is.
That would be the 229 "leading" scientists who Sky News looked into and said were 'mostly PhD students and not medical scientists at all.'
“Sky news in expert-shaming dog whistle shocker”
. There are some PhD students I would trust way more than some experienced professors and there are “non-medical” scientists whose analysis I would trust before many medics. Thank god we’ve got sky news to peer review them all, though.
