Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lower fatality rate (and longer gestation times) are things that make a disease spread farther (not necessarily faster -but we take care of that, with international travel). The OG Ebola had almost 100% fatality rate, and a short gestation time (I think only a few days). It didn't spread too far. The one that killed a few thousand people, though, had about a 50% fatality rate, and I think its gestation period was a b…
> COVID, I believe, had about a 1% rate, in the OG variant, and that brought the world to a standstill. The claims that caused lockdowns were 3-10% death rate. The world was brought to a standstill primarily due to massive fearmongering. The earliest high rates came from three things: Conflation of "infection" and "case", rationing of tests to people doctors were already pretty sure had been exposed (suppressing the…
1. A comment on this forum is not really the place to convince people of such a bold claim. It deserves at least an article/blog post, and maybe even a short book.
2. There is a large jump between the claims [the initial fatality estimate was high] and [the world was brought to a standstill due to fearmongering]. This gap is perhaps something you could address in a longer blog post
This is exactly the kind of topic that I’d love to see gwern or slatestarcodex tackle. There might be some truth to your story, but it’s a complex topic and needs a _ton_ of discussion