Thanks for contributing to the conversation in a respectful manner, @Ohmboy. This article was very engaging. However, I must also say the thinking contained within is flawed. In short, Dr. Lee argues that the UK (and by extension the US, France, Germany, and many others) are overreacting based on the data available. Essentially, he is saying that those governments are making premature, fear-based decisions that are likely to have disastrous economic implications. Those economic implications will themselves add to the death toll. However, his admonition of the UK government is also a fear-based argument. In several places he states there is really no way to know how bad the economic fall out will be but that it will be really bad. Here is one such example:
āAnd what about the effects on food production and global commerce, that will have unquantifiable consequences for people of all ages, perhaps especially in developing economies?ā
Here he admits that the economic and other social impacts are unquantifiable. In other words, no one knows how bad itās going to be. His basic argument is thus 'The UK government is making premature descisions based on knowing too little, so instead we should avoid the consequences about which we know very little."
On another note, from a scientific perspective this line really shocked me:
āIf heās right, the headline death rate due to this virus is likely to be ten to 20 times lower, say 0.25 per cent to 0.5 per cent. That puts the Covid-19 mortality rate in the range associated with infections like flu.ā
If the flu death rate is 0.1%, then 0.25% is 2.5 times more, and 0.5% is 5x more. I donāt have the calculuations in front of me but those numbers are likely to both be statistically significant and have a large effect size. Saying those are āin the rangeā strikes me as being a bit cavalier with the numbers.
Thanks again for contributing this article to the discussion, though. Even though I disagree with itās conclusions and underlying way of thinking, Iām glad humanity is having discussions like this out in the open. No one person is completely right. Itās going to be a true group effort for us to figure out this whole thing (and most other things).
