Go44dad posted:
I read this when it came out, which was actually April 2, not April 15. There are two big problems with it. First, Wittkowski says "Well, what people are trying to do is flatten the curve. I don’t really know why." I think we all know why (and he knows why also) - it was so that hospitals wouldn't be overwhelmed, and would have time to prepare. It's completely false to say that that was not worthwhile. Tell that to doctors and nurses.
The second problem is that he says, "the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity." Again not true. Many things can make the disease less fatal, starting with a vaccine, and including all sorts of treatments. In the month since the shutdown, all sorts of those have been being made and tested; they even now know that outcomes are better if people are placed on their stomachs. The outcome next fall is likely to be different because of the advances that have been made in this month or two of shutdown.
I also read his scientific paper. Some of his numbers have been proven to be wrong. Even in this interview, he says he thinks there will be a total of 10,000 deaths; right this moment, the number is 37,000. IHME's models now track remarkably closely to the actual numbers (for today, they say 35,000), which indicates that the total, with social distancing, will be around 60,000.
I'd be more interested to know what he is saying right now, than what he said two weeks ago. He says in here that he thinks testing is useless, but he admits that maybe testing for antibodies could be useful. I daresay he is right about herd immunity, which is, of course, why everyone is saying that there should be a lot more testing. But he is not right about any of the rest of it.