This is a quick post, as I’m about to sign off from screens for the day…
One of the problems that I have with the analysis by Ivor Cummins, and his belief that masks don’t work, and social distancing (and other measures) is basically a waste of time, is why don’t the above mentioned countries (and others besides) follow the Gompertz curves he is quite keen on showing?
Clearly they are getting through this pandemic somehow, and the deaths in those countries are tiny.
- Sweden: 10 million people, 5,800 deaths
- Cuba: 10 million people, 108 deaths
- Thailand: 69 million people, 58 deaths
- Vietnam: 96 million people: 35 deaths
- Taiwan: 23 million people, 7 deaths
Sweden is not a success story in this comparison. And don’t get me started on the 60K deaths in the UK.
One of the problem I have with the Cummins’ narrative (and not exclusively him) is that it leads to an argument something like this:
- this virus spreads like crazy (infects a huge chunk of your pop before you can do anything really) and most people who get it show mild or even no symptoms.
- this is not stopped by non-pharmaceutical interventions (like face-masks).
- this leads quickly to herd immunity and the end of the pandemic.
Hence, the best advice seems to be, as our Dear Leader has said, to just “take it on the chin”.
However. The virus didn’t behave that way in the countries I cite above (for example). They did manage to get a hold on it, without stopping their economies. They did make use of face-masks and other NPIs and their death tolls are 1-3 orders of magnitude smaller.
Why did we not follow their examples? Is it better to just chuck our vulnerable populations straight into the fire?
Something about the Cummins’ line of argumentation is just not stacking up for me. Unless I missed something important from his argument.
Cheers
PP