Computer modellers are still driving the COVID-19 fear wagon

Renewed calls for prolonged lockdowns to deal with the new SARS-CoV-2 mutations are wrong headed. It has been a year since emergency measures were declared. Yet, the policy response to the COVID-19 crisis has been and continues to be moved by fear that is in turn propelled by statistical models incapable of accounting for risk and of pondering consequences. SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the disease identified as COVID-19, is a reality. It poses health risks to a well-defined segment of the Canadian population. And while SARS-CoV-2 can infect everyone, the models and responses largely pretend everyone can equally suffer and die from COVID-19. The logic of this pretense points toward lockdowns and heavy restrictions for all instead of carefully-designed protection of the vulnerable.

The initial reaction to this logic may have been reasonable in mid-March 2020, were it not for the fact that the panic-prone politicians discarded existing pandemic plans designed precisely to prevent panic. …