COVID-19 Response Debate

September 8, 2020

00:00:00

COVID-19 Response Debate

Be it resolved, the scientific community has overreacted to the threat of COVID-19 and the data prove it.

Six months into a global pandemic and 63,000 scientific papers later, scientists and medical researchers continue to be perplexed by COVID-19. There are many unknowns with the virus, and one of the most controversial is how deadly it really is. Since the beginning of the pandemic, leading health institutions such as the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have warned that COVID-19 is much more dangerous than the seasonal flu and that, without expansive public health measures, millions of people around the world could die from the virus. But there are some in the scientific community who disagree. And they say they have the data to prove it. Antibody testing of large population groups indicates that we could be grossly underestimating the number of people who have been infected by the virus – which means we are dramatically overestimating the death rate. Given these findings, they question whether sweeping public health controls are the way to approach a possible second wave of COVID-19 this autumn.

“The lockdowns, as a result of the scientific overreaction to COVID, have had an enormous deleterious health effect.”

– Jay Bhattacharya

“Our goal should be pandemic control so we can return to normal. I don’t think letting the transmission run amok is going to get us anywhere.”

– Sten Vermund