He was responding to an estimate that placed the death toll at 3.4%.
The highest estimates now seem to be at around .28%.
That's more than an order of magnitude. He wasn't all that wrong.
Also, he advised focusing efforts on the most vulnerable; the elderly and people with comorbidities. He was very right there too. All those vaccines into kids and lockdowns of schools after the elderly were triple-vaccinated was a stunning misallocation of resources.
While I don't think many of Jay's points were wrong, he sort of established himself as an anti-establishment person. I think if he had acted slightly differently, we'd all be praising him for keeping us from making a big mistake.
But the reality is that the medical establishment has an immune system honed by decades of vaccine denialism (remember "vaccines cause autism because mercury") and tends to overreact when people- acting in good faith- question its findings publicly.
The medical establishment bring on a lack of trust due to their close ties with pharmaceutical companies who's aim is to simply make profits from the "medicine discovery of the day", no matter the consequences.
If the medical establishment (doctors, scientists, researchers, etc) took no funding from pharmaceutical companies, it might help their position. Taking funding from companies that have way too often been found of wrong doing, just poisons people's view of the whole system.
The highest estimates now seem to be at around .28%.
That's more than an order of magnitude. He wasn't all that wrong.
Also, he advised focusing efforts on the most vulnerable; the elderly and people with comorbidities. He was very right there too. All those vaccines into kids and lockdowns of schools after the elderly were triple-vaccinated was a stunning misallocation of resources.