Statist Responses to COVID-19: An Interview with Michael Fumento
By Jon Hersey
Michael Fumento is a lawyer, journalist, and author who has investigated epidemics and controversial scientific issues for the past thirty-five years. His books include The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics, described by former CDC chief epidemiologist Dr. Alexander D. Langmuir as “a major contribution, allaying public hysteria and focusing efforts for control and care to the high-risk groups most in need”; and Science Under Siege: Balancing Technology and the Environment, of which former National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz said, “Fumento’s clear exposition of the way in which knowledge gained through good scientific research can be distorted and used to spread misconceptions and needless public fear should receive widespread attention.”1
On March 27, 2020, we discussed the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve edited our conversation for clarity and added citations where I think they may be helpful.
Hersey: Why listen to a lawyer on the subject of viral outbreaks?
Fumento: Lawyers are trained much better than journalists to do research. If a journalist makes a mistake, nobody will even say anything, because they make so many mistakes that there’s no point. The New York Times runs a headline, “World to End Tomorrow,” and the next day, on page eighteen, it has a single-sentence correction: “World to End Yesterday.” That’s journalism.
On the other hand, lawyers deal with life and death and with billion-dollar lawsuits. We have thoughtful, well-trained opponents; journalists don’t. We have to assume that another guy or a team of people is against us who are as smart as we are. So we have to deeply research everything.
As for viral outbreaks, I did my first AIDS article back in 1986, which made international news. Many responded to the AIDS outbreak saying, “Everybody’s going to get it now.” I called BS and was right. And over the years, with one disease after another, I just got better and better at understanding outbreaks: AIDS, SARS, Ebola I, Ebola II, Creutzfeldt-Jakob (aka “mad cow”) disease, avian flu, Zika virus. Every single time, I called it right, and by some great coincidence, the public-health people always called it wrong.
Hersey: And you think that there’s a basic mechanism that operates more or less the same with all of these outbreaks?
Fumento: Yes, it’s quite simple. It’s called Farr’s Law, and it was first promulgated in 1840, which is, importantly, eight years before the first public health organization anywhere in the world.2 It says that all epidemics—meaning all epidemics—follow a more or less bell-shaped curve. They start out with a very steep incline. And then over time they slope and they slope, and then they eventually flatten and go down. That may seem obvious even to those who don’t know about the law. Yet we hear with each new epidemic, “If the virus continues to spread at the current rate . . . ,” and the answer is always the same: Viruses never continue to spread at the current rate—never, ever, ever.
It’s the way all diseases work. They get the low-hanging fruit first. And then, as time goes on, they exhaust the low-hanging fruit, and it’s harder and harder for them to claim victims. And the numbers go way down, sometimes to zero: SARS disappeared in July 2003, eight months after it appeared.3 . . .
Hersey: But what if all or most of us prove to be low-hanging fruit for COVID-19?
Fumento: What we’re seeing with COVID-19 indicates that the vast majority of people infected may never even know it. They’ll get no symptoms at all, or will sneeze a little bit, cough a little bit; they’ll have a bit of a sore throat.4 But that’s as bad as it’ll get for them. Now we don’t know the percentages yet, because we haven’t had really widespread testing. But that will come. And when it does come, we will have to make up a new word to express the vastness of the majority of those infected who show no symptoms.
So, I think the ultimate death rate from COVID-19 will be much, much lower than is projected right now. You can’t project it without Farr’s Law. You have to plot it on a curve.
Hersey: And, of course, many are, and bureaucrats are acting on the view that flattening the curve requires extreme social distancing and government-enforced lockdowns. Do these help to flatten the curve, and is it possible that opening cities back up could cause a new high in the bell?
Fumento: Well, we know, at the extreme end, that hermits don’t get contagious diseases. But we have to make some very hard decisions. And right now, these decisions are being made by those saying, as John F. Kennedy put it, “We will pay any price. We will bear any burden.” This to prevent each and every COVID-19 case, never mind COVID-19 death. But the people saying that, they all have secure jobs.
I mean, think about that: If you work for the World Health Organization or the Center for Disease Control, COVID is not going to put you out of a job; it probably will get you more money. If you’re a tenured professor at Imperial College, or anywhere, you’re not going to lose your job to COVID-19. If anything, you have a lot more free time on your hands because the universities are closed or have moved classes online. By and large, the people making the projections that have led to these measures have nothing to lose.
But I am watching people around me in the Philippines. What’s happening is that the mall closes down, and everybody in that mall is suddenly out of work—and almost none of them have any savings. You work in a hardware store? Closed: no work, no savings. You work at a pastry shop? Closed: no work, no savings. You work at a McDonald’s? Closed: no work, no savings. These people are suffering tremendously. So I think we need to look at the suffering caused by lockdowns. People suffer when they get COVID, and they suffer when they’re thrown out of work and can’t eat. They suffer both ways.