By Allan R. Supak, MD, Stevensville
A few observations regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Why this overreaction? In my opinion, a Draconian response such as we are seeing would be more appropriate to an Ebola outbreak. We have learned that the Level 4 biohazard virology lab in Wuhan, China was the source of the pandemic with the index patient being a worker at that lab. The ‘wet markets’ are gross and barbaric but pardon the pun, they were a ‘red herring’.
I think folks in the intelligence community got it wrong again. I believe that they panicked and scared the upper echelons of government into thinking that this might be an escaped ‘weaponized’ version of the previous SARS-corona virus which caused the 2002 SARS pandemic in Guangdong province, China. The Chinese government’s secrecy and mendacity regarding that outbreak led to our government’s ‘worst case scenario’ and overreaction.
But now we know a lot more about the current SARS-corona virus. It’s no more fatal than our uglier influenza viruses, such as the H1N1 swine flu 2002 pandemic. It’s truly unfortunate that both viruses’ effects are so severe in the ‘at risk’ population. But, it’s NOT Ebola! The WHO rates the average fatality rate for Ebola to be 50% with the range being 25-90% depending on the region.
In my opinion, there has been a huge overreaction with Draconian measures predicated on vastly wrong models. Suspicions regarding the communist Chinese government may have caused this result.
David Welch says
This letter has to be someone’s idea of a really sick joke. Otherwise, only a graduate of Trump University medical school could possibly write such utter nonsense.
For those of you who may think anything in this letter is accurate, I would encourage you to research for yourself: a) the differences among Ebola, H1N1 and SARS_Cov_2 , and b) the myriad debunked conspiracy theories of the origins of SARS_Cov_2 ( which include the Wuhan lab myth ).