Yes — that is ALWAYS what happens. The timeline of infection is NEVER pushed forward. It’s just a matter of gathering more information and is standard practice in epidemiology.
I understand that the timeline is never pushed forward, but when the timeline is being pushed back far enough with a highly-contagious virus, it obviously affects the number of potentially infected persons and, therefore, the mortality rate.
All these earlier cases? You list two. The death in Santa Clara County was on February 6th, over a month after Taiwan began implementing containment procedures. So the only case we have from December outside of China is the French case. That’s just not enough to build a case on.
Forgive me for not providing an exhaustive list. I thought you were aware of the litany of prior cases. Last month we learned that there had been numerous “hidden outbreaks” in at least four other major cities outside New York: Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle. “Even in early February — while the world focused on China — the virus was not only likely to be spreading in multiple American cities, but also seeding blooms of infection elsewhere in the United States, the researchers found.” In those cities, as of March 1, there were only 23 confirmed cases of coronavirus. But according to the Northeastern model, there could have actually been about 28,000 infections in those cities by then.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/coronavirus-early-outbreaks-cities.html
If there were really were millions of people infected with the disease, we should have been seeing a great many deaths from it. We did not.
First, I’m not sure how you would classify a “great many deaths.” What number would this be? If the mortality rate may be as low as .1% (as Dr. Fauci, himself, stated in the New New England Journal of Medicine in February 2020), how many deaths would you expect to see?
Months?!?!! Your ‘common sense’ is what scientists call ‘science denial’.
This statement seems more like an opinion than a refuation…
And what is 20% of a million?
200,000. But keep in mind that 200,000 deaths per 1 million represents the number of people who aren’t asymptomatic or don’t exhibit only mild symptoms. People in this group will exhibit symptoms ranging from moderate to severe to life-threatening, and in the extreme, death.
Here we come to the nub of the matter: you think that you’re smarter than people who have studied these problems for years. So tell me, are you the smartest person in the world? Are you also the world’s greatest nuclear physicist, the world’s greatest novelist, the world’s greatest athlete, and so on?
The answer to all of your questions is no. But the fact that I am not as smart, skilled, or great as any of the people you mentioned does not mean that I believe everything they say, or that I believe they are demi-gods, or that they are infallible. They are human beings, which means that like me, and regardless of how smart they are, they can err.
Moreover, I think I would be inclined to accept what “smarter” minds are saying if all “smarter” minds were in agreement. But the fact is, they are not. Why should we ignore “smarter” minds at Stanford University?
Or “smarter” minds atU.S.C.?
It sounds like you are essentially saying that you choose to believe the majority of “smarter” minds, no?
If so, might I remind you that the majority of the smartest scientific minds in the 1950s assured Americans that cigarettes were not hazardous to health. A few rogue minds disagreed. They were silenced.
You do recall how that turned out in the 1960s, don’t you?
