No, Americans Aren’t ‘Afraid’ of Coronavirus

We’re making sacrifices to protect our most vulnerable citizens.

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Let’s start with some facts. 

COVID-19 is killing a lot of people. From the announcement of the first confirmed U.S. case on Jan. 20 to April 16, it has killed nearly 34,000 Americans. (I’ll ignore claims that number is inflated as well more persuasive arguments that it’s an undercount.) 

My longtime friend Bill Bennett, the former secretary of education, recently appeared on Fox News (where we are both contributors) to “put the data in perspective,” as one of the hosts put it. 

The upshot of Bennett’s position is that the COVID-19 threat has been wildly exaggerated from the outset. Contrary to every dictionary I can find, he says COVID-19 is not a pandemic, “but we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this. And it’s really unfortunate. Look at the facts.”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ray Salemi

    I'm starting to wonder about the actual impact of a guy like Bennett spouting nonsense on Fox News. Fox already has an audience that believes what it believes. While Bennet may be giving them cognitive comfort (to alleviate the dissonance) are comments such as his really swinging the needle in terms of broader public opinion?

    It must be said, I live in Massachusetts and I don't read many opinion pieces (The Dispatch commentators have made the cut.) So maybe I don't have enough lived experience to say whether Bennett's nonsense is going to change anyone's mind or make any difference to people's behavior.

    Still, does it count when someone on Fox says things that only committed Fox watchers see?

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    Ray Salemi

    "It’s like yelling at firemen for all the water damage to your house..."

    Well done, sir! I love a good analogy.

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    Logical

    The good readers of TD should be critical of some of the columnists like Lyman Stone. He offered his opinion; he may be right or wrong. But we must learn the full story. I don't really care for Tedros....fyi. But something just doesn't jibe here and let's find out.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/17/trump-tells-damnable-murderous-lie/

    Those of you who consider WaPo as fake news, I cannot help you. But you may be able to verify the veracity of Milbank's claims some other way.

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    1. Avatar photo
      td12212

      One also has to realize that many other countries also took the same data from the WHO with the exact same timeline and arrived at radically different results than the US. Examples: Taiwan, New Zealand, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Germany etc. Why you might ask ? They prioritized saving lives over keeping the economy going. Also since those countries have wide safety nets the impacts to society are somewhat lower.

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        A Citizen

        Note that Taiwan is not a WHO member and was denied access to WHO data. That's one of the reasons they did better. Indeed, Taiwan first approached WHO and told them about community transmission and their data was ignored by WHO, since they aren't a member. Did you read Lyman Stone's piece?

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          td12212

          Agreed about Taiwan, that was my mistake. The others though don't fall in the same bracket.

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      A Citizen

      Milbank's a good reporter, but this piece (which is labeled an opinion piece, by the way) reeks of anonymous sources at the WHO who are trying to keep the gravy train rolling. The story of the WHO's stalling on behalf of China used to be conventional wisdom before Trump started in on them. Jonah predicted this, by the way, two weeks ago. Perfectly sensible attacks on the WHO will lose credibility on the press just because Trump is now on the side of the WHO-attackers.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Logical

        Good point about oped piece and anonymous....but the facts will come out eventually; all I am saying is don't yet trust the serial liar, there's more to learn here.

        If you read the full column, you will find that the gravy train guys are not highly relevent; there an entire contingent of CDC, HHS, & HHS higher ups in 24/7 deliberations with WHO. Stay tuned.

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          A Citizen

          Just to be clear. This isn't trusting Trump... it's trusting Stone. The fact that Trump and Stone happen to be at least partly on the same page here, and that Trump's reasons for it might (!!) be self-serving, are completely irrelevant. And Stone's piece doesn't tie the WHO's capitulation to Chinese dissembling to the gravy train... the two are separate issues. I am completely unconvinced by Milbank telling me there are Americans who work with the WHO who were given data that suggested a problem. What did WHO do with the data? I agree with you... it will all come out eventually.

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      Logical

      Breitbart, NR, Fox will never reveal this. I'm praying SH, DF, & JG would at least acknowledge there is a problem with the one sided account of Lyman Stone.

      The urgency here is that cutting off WHO funding to reelect Trump will kill innocent people. Streamlining WHO for cost efficiency is legit, but let's not mix up priorities right now.

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  4. B Johnson

    All human life is to be protected. Even the lives of those who do not want to expend the resources needed to protect lives other than their own.

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  5. Avatar photo
    John A Johnson

    Nice try but no cigar. People panicked and stocked up, now those who didn’t are concerned and doing the same thing. Don’t tell me final consumption has gone up or that pooping at home rather than at the office is the issue (how tempting to have said, “the tissue”), those are relatively modest impacts. The shelves went empty literally in a day! Perhaps you missed the hot rumor a few Fridays back that Trump was going to lock down the entire country; date I say people foolish enough to have voted for him (in primaries; those who voted for him in the general can at least argue he was the lesser of two evils)!are foolish enoug to have believed that rumor.

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    1. Ann G

      Initially there was responsible stocking up and hoarding to relieve anxiety. What we're seeing now is an increased need of groceries to make up for not eating out. Restaurant supply hasn't been diverted to retail sales yet. Also, people buy in larger quantity to avoid shopping as much, though the fear of shortages no doubt has people stocking up on certain items. (The toilet paper thing snowballed but once the anxious have a large enough mountain of toilet paper to feel at ease, they'll quit buying and supply should catch up with demand.) Meat packing plants closing because of employees getting sick and farmers not being able to get workers to harvest the crops could reduce supplies. We could have drought or flooding or cold snaps reducing supply as well, so it isn't simply fear or anxiety prompting stocking up, but prudence.

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  6. Mary Stine

    You are not helping here, C. white. It isn't even 2:00 am yet! What about the young
    workers now suffering with Covid19 who never stopped working at places like, say
    meat packing plant or Amazon processing centers or hospitals? Would these young people be still healthy if strict PPE and social distancing had been practiced where they work?

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    1. C White

      Re the pork plant workers. This is from the NYT quoting a worker: “I can’t wait to go back to work for the simple reason that this is the only thing that supports my family,” said Achut Deng, a Sudanese refugee who in six years worked her way up from a “wizard knife” operator paid $12.75 an hour to a shift lead making $18.70. “I do feel sorry for everyone who is going through this, I feel sorry for myself, but it’s like, I feel better now so I’d rather go back to work.”

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  7. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    It's too early to speculate what the mortality rate is, since we have insufficient testing. Ther Mercury News reported on a flawed Stanford sample of 3,000+ Santa Clara residents showing between 2-4% have antibodies (meaning they were infected, recovered, and never showed symptoms). While dangerous to extrapolate, it suggests over 28,000 have been exposed (1,883 confirmed cases).

    So the question is valid if we over-reacted or not. Staying home when sick, and frequent hand washing are all good to do all the time. Some social distancing is good as well, particularly around the elderly and those immune suppressed.

    Here's an analogy: what should be the speed limit? We know that at 20 mph, traffic fatalities plummet....We could save thousands of lives per year by doing so. Even at 30 mph, we'd save a substantial amount of lives. So why then do we choose to accept higher death tolls commensurate with 70mph on the Interstate? Is 15mph the equivalent of shelter-in-place? BTW, I fully support 20mph in school zones. Those kids are vulnerable.

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    1. C White

      I’m not sure why the Stanford study is flawed. Here’s another study from Boston that’s showing the same thing:

      https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/

      And another from NEJM:

      https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316?mod=article_inline

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        Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

        A good question, for brevity sake I didn't include that originally. It's not a representative sample, they recruited volunteers from facebook ads. It skews towards white women 19-64, who are willing to volunteer. So going from sample to estimating the population is tricky at best. But it is still valuable information, as it suggests much more infection that first assumed.

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        1. C White

          In scientific parlance, a study is flawed if for some reason it did not do what it set out to do — and should then be ignored. On the other hand, a study is limited by the data it generates, here by the population tested; and the authors clearly concede that point. However, if u look at all the studies coming out in the last week or so, they all point to the same thing: There are a lot of people out their w antibodies and most don’t know they have/had the virus. This immunity n the population is starting to build, AND the mortality is a lot lower than has been reported — probably lower than 0.7%.

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  8. Mary Stine

    Thanks C. white. I will try to remember this at 2 am when I can't sleep! I would be more comforted if the data included a lot more people, especially in places other than New York! My emphasis on more cross-section tests is to help further define healthy parameters. For example, how long does an infected person need to be in quarantine after symptoms are gone? Do we need to test especially persons returning to work in the medical field?

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    1. C White

      The recommendation for medical personnel is two weeks after you are asymptomatic — agree it begs the question about the 50% who are asx carriers who don’t know they have/had it. The public misperception is that this is a ‘small pox’ ELE. (In that case I’d be n my undisclosed bunker w weapons and enough supplies to last a few years.). It isn’t (but we r enthralled with the death porn). The corona viruses have been around a long time — this particular one has never seen a human u ‘til the Chinese apparently mishandled it. We need to get the “Demon in the Freezer” (great read) out of our minds and get the healthy back to work and let our natural immunity flatten the curve over the next couple of years like it has since Homo sapiens have been around.

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    Bill Nelson

    I am somewhat of a fan (all lower case) of Mr. Bennett, who holds a doctorate in philosophy (anyone who can accomplish this is tops in my book). But as with most politicos and most commentators: there are liars, damn liars, then statisticians. The thing about Covid-19 is that it is highly contagious, with many examples of gatherings which resulted in very high rates of infection. And as flu has a season, and it dies out, Covid-19 does not seem to show any indications of a "seasonal" virus.
    But there is one way to stem the fear or concern. Medical science needs to be able to very quickly categorize any new virus (there are specific types) and have a starting point from which a new treatment (drug) can be very quickly developed and fast tracked for approval. This will require a new emphasis on research on a scale of HIV.

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  10. Mary Stine

    You hit this out of the park, Jonah! May I send this to all my lovable curmudgeon friends who have been grumbling along with Bill??

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