Day 75: Don't Be Alarmed

The world topped two million cases last night and now stands at 2,075,000, with 134,000 deaths. The standings are mostly unchanged, with the US at 641,000 cases and 28,000 deaths, and New York State now well ahead of Spain in cases (213,000 vs 177,000), though not deaths. Nevertheless, Dr. Fauci thinks we're finally flattening the curve.

ProPublica published a report on excess deaths in the US not yet attributed to coronavirus. It singled out Massachusetts and Detroit as particularly likely to be undercounting:

In Middlesex, Massachusetts’s most populous county and home to Cambridge, Somerville and Lowell, officials reported 317 at-home deaths in March. That’s about a 20% increase from the same time period for the past three years, in which deaths ranged from 249 to 265. [...]

Older people are particularly vulnerable to dying from COVID-19. In all of Massachusetts, deaths for people 65 and older increased by 3.6% in March from the same month, on average, during the previous three years. The comparison to 2019 was particularly dramatic, an additional 250 deaths across Massachusetts. At the same time, the data shows that increase can’t be accounted for by the official coronavirus tally alone: only 89 deaths statewide were attributed to the virus in March, according to state Health Department data.

Detroit had an increase of 110 "dead person observed" calls in early April. Other places are not necessarily doing any better; in many states vital records retrieval is difficult, slow, or entirely suspended, so the data is not available.

Massachusetts' numbers are up 6% today, with 151 new deaths. We are nearing 30,000 cases.

While early reports out of China indicated little risk to pregnant women, a couple of cases of death late in pregnancy hit the news today: a case study from Iran and an NHS nurse.

The coronavirus crisis seems to have led to many people discovering the Internet for the first time, at least judging from the amount of hand-wringing and alarm-sounding going on over "fake news" and "conspiracy theories". I don't mean Starving cannibal rats swarm deserted US streets amid Coronavirus lockdown. Some people might call that "fake news", but we already had yellow journalism. Giving it a new name only confuses the situation.

Instead I mean the sort of alarm expressed by a doctor on Medium about a non-doctor on Medium's hemoglobin theory. I came across the non-doctor's theory on reddit, where you can still find the archived link and other details, including the salient point that, despite sounding original, the non-doctor was summarizing existing research. Like other theories out there in preprint right now (several of which have been PlagueBlogged), it was interesting but not yet substantiated. There is always a pattern of people getting upset that someone dared suggest their particular misreading of a preprint because it's somehow vaguely dangerous or irresponsible to say something the original author usually didn't even say. (PlagueBlog is not suggesting that the Medium doctor is unique; he's just a well-written example not buried in a comments section.)

So, after a good deal of scare-quoting and gatekeeping, the alarmed doctor admits that the non-doctor's theory is clearly based at least in part on existing research (which the doctor also happens to find "seriously flawed"). His conclusion, far more unsubstantiated than any mistaken inference in the essay he's criticizing, is that somebody posting a scientific (if ultimately incorrect) theory on the internet "can genuinely put lives at risk". PlagueBlog eagerly awaits the mass graves and the death count websites devoted to victims of in silico speculation of this sort.

It's especially disappointing when an actual scientist can't abide by the process of science. It's not even a tiny bit surprising when the average journalist can't abide the average Joe. For example, Vox bemoans that 30% of Americans believe the coronavirus "conspiracy" theory that it originated in a lab, probably accidentally. Note that no conspiracy is involved; it's just a theory about the origins of the virus, as Vox reluctantly admits:

The belief that Covid-19 was created by humans stems from speculation by some scientists during the early days of the outbreak that the virus came from a laboratory.

Note that this theory has still not been disproven, though it may not be as fresh and appealing as it once was. There is no particular reason for Joe to change his mind about it, because it's still a free country no matter how alarmed you are. Vox thinks that Joe, being lower class, is in far more danger from coronavirus than the average alarmed middle class hand-wringer, but it's not his idea that the virus came from a lab that endangers him. If anything that would make him more cautious.

Vox also notes (referring to an older article and poll) that over 40% of Americans and even more Fox News viewers believed that the epidemic was being exaggerated. While it's clear how this opinion (finally!) could pose a danger to some people were it wrong, Vox hasn't actually established that it's wrong. Even PlagueBlog believes the pandemic is being exaggerated, because what else is left for the media to report about? Everything but coronavirus has been cancelled. This leads to a natural exaggeration of a disease that is, despite its rising death toll, still not the Spanish flu.

It is possible to hold an informed opinion that the economic toll of the cure is worse than the death toll of the disease (and various similar notions Vox might dismiss as "skepticism"). The easily alarmed may not like or agree with such opinions, but that doesn't make the alarmed opinion the truth and Joe's opinions a conspiracy.