“Do we have enough data to support the panic?”
In a recent article by John P.A. Ioannidis (professor of medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University), he made some good points…
The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco. … The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.”
He continued:
In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. … If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.”