Since people are going to whine about there being no “point by point” debunking, I’ll copy this comment I made on some of the biggest issues I noticed. (There are many, many more.)
This article is quite misleading and uninformed. Just a few examples:
- The author cites China’s data on the spread of the virus to argue that social distancing is unnecessary. But China used extreme social distancing appears to be the main cause of their improvement in terms of number of cases.
- The author states
…beware of believing metrics designed to intentionally scare like “cases doubling”.
There is no evidence that the phrase “cases doubling” is anything more than descriptive. This author is pushing his agenda without backing up his claims at all. He later states:
Globally, COVID-19’s growth rate is rather steady.
Is this true? No. Don’t just believe me — take a look for yourself: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Worldwide, the virus doubled from ~75,000 cases on Feb. 22 to ~150,000 cases. on March 14th. Cases are now over 300,000 globally. The virus went from doubling every 21 days to doubling every 7 days. This isn’t “steady” by any definition.
3. Perhaps most unbelievably, the author headlines one section of his article “1% of cases will be severe,” but this is false. The sources he cites all say that between 12 and 20 percent of cases will be severe. The one percent figure refers to the number of people who are tested for the virus. Is the author being dishonest here in an attempt to sell people on his favorite policy position? Or is he simply incompetent? I have no idea. All I know is that he is a terrible source of information. Get your figures from an actual expert.
