Counterproductive Reporting

This article from the LA Times titled How alarming predictions about coronavirus losses in California gave way to guarded optimism is super frustrating. It seems to ignore the cause and effect of California’s efforts to mitigate the issue. California took steps to confront the pandemic and losses were contained. Had we not done that and continue to do that, things on the ground would have been alarming — not just the numbers.

It could be true that those numbers might have still been overblown — but we have no real way of knowing. As of today (April 18th), we now know of nearly 35,000 dead. Even if we are at the peak, that number will only grow higher. If California and others hadn’t take action it would most certainly be much higher.

Vox has an exploration of this here at We’re not overreacting to to the Coronavirus crisis: ”With the coronavirus, the right action looks like an overreaction as it’s happening.“

Unfortunately, we’ll see a lot more stories like the LA Times one in the months to come.