{"id":2197,"date":"2020-03-23T07:34:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T07:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/?p=2197"},"modified":"2020-03-24T07:39:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T07:39:30","slug":"nobel-prize-winner-shares-some-good-news-about-the-coronavirus-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/news\/nobel-prize-winner-shares-some-good-news-about-the-coronavirus-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Prize winner shares some good news about the coronavirus pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018The real situation is not nearly as terrible as they make it out to be.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Coronavirus
Coronavirus crisis volunteer Rhiannon Navin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Published: March 23, 2020 at 11:36 a.m. ET, By Shawn Langlois<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, delivering his optimistic take<\/a> on the coronavirus pandemic to the Los Angeles Times over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Levitt was credited for correctly calling early on that China would get through the worst of its devastating outbreak before many other health experts predicted.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 31, China had 46 new deaths compared with 42 the day before, which Levitt recognized as a slowing rate of growth. So he sent out an optimistic report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis suggests that the rate of increase in number of the deaths will slow down even more over the next week,\u201d he said in a note widely shared on Chinese social media. Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, also said the number of deaths would soon start decreasing every day.<\/p>\n

He ultimately nailed his call for a mid-February peak with a total tally of about 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths. As of March 16, China had counted a total of 80,298 cases and 3,245 deaths \u2014 in a country of almost 1.4 billion people where about 10 million die every year.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s got a similar view for the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need is to control the panic… we\u2019re going to be fine,\u201d he said, adding that the data doesn\u2019t support the gloom and doom epidemiologist have been warning about.<\/p>\n

Levitt looked at the stats from 78 countries with more than 50 reported cases of COVID-19 every day and sees \u201csigns of recovery,\u201d focusing on the number of new cases, not the cumulative figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cNumbers are still noisy but there are clear signs of slowed growth,\u201d he told the L.A. Times, claiming that, however, the trajectory of deaths in the U.S. back up his findings.<\/p>\n

There are now 35,224 cases and 471 deaths in the U.S., as of Monday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University<\/a>. On Friday afternoon, there were 16,018 cases and 210 deaths.<\/p>\n

Levitt said social-distancing mandates and getting vaccinated against the flu are both critical to the fight against the spread. Italy\u2019s strong anti-vaccine movement, he explained, likely played a factor in the explosion of cases, because the spread of the flu likely was a factor in overwhelming hospitals and increasing the chances of coronavirus going undetected.<\/p>\n

He lays some of the blame on the media for sparking panic by focusing on the increase in cumulative cases and spotlighting celebrities, like Tom Hanks and Idris Elba, who have been infected.<\/p>\n

Levitt is also worried that an overreaction could trigger another crisis, with lost jobs and hopelessness creating their own set of problems, such as a surge in suicide rate.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he sees the U.S. unemployment rate hitting 30%<\/a> in the coming months as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. If his projection proves true, unemployment would be worse than it was during the Great Depression and three times worse than the 2007-\u201909 recession.<\/p>\n

While those kinds headlines continue to spread fear, Levitt sticks by his simple message: The coronavirus pandemic is \u201cnot the end of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: www.marketwatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018The real situation is not nearly as terrible as they make it out to be.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}