The story comes from FEE:

It’s hard to read the drama, incompetence, and confusion without thinking about Dr. John Ioannidis, the C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention at Stanford University.

In a March 17 STAT article, Ioannidis warned the world was looking at what could turn out to be a “once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.” He worried central planners were making sweeping and reflexive changes without sufficient data.

Locking people up without knowing the fatality risk of COVID-19 could have severe social and financial consequences that could be totally irrational, Ioannidis warned.

“It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies,” said Ioannidis, one of the most-cited scientists in the world.

In one sense, Ioannidis has already been proven right. The models on which lockdowns were initiated have already proven astronomically wrong. But that was hardly the only example.

Every day it seems there’s another story about reporting flaws or mixups.

Tuesday it was a lab in Connecticut where researchers said they discovered a flaw in a testing system for the virus. The flaw resulted in 90 people receiving false positives. That may not sound like many, but researchers said the test is used by labs across America.

A few days earlier, it was announced that Texas had removed 3,484 cases from its positive Covid-19 case count because the San Antonio Health Department was reporting “probable” cases. None of the people had actually tested positive for COVID-19.

The whole story is filled with disaster after disaster in terms of data collection and management.

Of the many reasons to suspect this virus is not as serious as we were originally led to believe, the sloppy handling of data may not be the most obvious. The mismanagement points to a lack of real concern from anyone in a position of leadership.

Besides, the alternative – that this really is the best we can do – would be a far more serious problem.