Sunday 22 March 2020

An Israeli doctor on Covid-19

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'And do you know what’s most absurd? That in the final analysis Trump was right. Not that the coronavirus is just plain flu – it absolutely isn’t – but as he put it: ‘This is just my hunch – way under 1 percent’ [will die]. We must be cautious, of course, but at the moment a high probability is emerging that the risks are far lower than what the World Health Organization presented. Under two assumptions – that the health system doesn’t collapse and that life continues as usual – we are not likely to see more than 13,500 victims of the coronavirus in Israel.' (About 45,000 people die in Israel in a normal year, which would make for a rise of approximately one-third.)

1 comment:

  1. Betty Camper de Pat commented on this article as follows. "Some problems with this article. Yamin doesn't claim the R0 number is 2. His interlocutor suggests a R0 of 2 and then all the subsequent assertions are based on this theoretical number that the reporter suggested and for which there is no justification. He also says the last time we heard about Corona is 17 years ago with SARS. This means, quite surprising for an expert, he is unaware that MERS is a coronavirus. A coronavirus with a fatality rate of 36%. MERS is sometimes called Camel virus and is currently endemic in parts of the Middle East so its quite surprising that he is unaware that it is a coronavirus. I could got on with my analysis but if these two issues on their own don't shake your cognitive bias to believe what you want then nothing I could say would. Great title though. I mean who needs to read it with a title like that?"

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