Rich Lowry, a long-admired editor and contributor at National Review Online, has taken a couple of people to task, for criticizing the coronavirus lockdown as an overreaction.

In Lowry’s article “The Absurd Case against the Coronavirus Lockdown” he chastises them for implying that 60-some-odd thousand deaths from the Wuhan Flu is no big deal.

But, that wasn’t Mr. Bennett’s and Leibsohn’s point. Their lead sentence in the second paragraph sets it up: “A panic and hysteria over a pandemic that does not look to be what so many frightened us into thinking has radically degraded this country.”

Sure, they started their article off with a reference to modeling predictions, and maybe didn’t set out in stark-enough terms exactly how far off such modeling has been to date.

But otherwise, the Bennet/Leibsohn commentary is spot on. A fear-mongering media has bred a panic’d-sheep mentality based on over-inflated numbers and under-counted cases which, when extrapolated, create a worse-than-normal death rate that isn’t true.

Maybe the usually-meticulous Lowry was having a bad day, and mis-read the initial lead sentences…or his brief scan skipped the relevant caveats…but he’s wrong on this.

Bennett and Leibsohn were spot on…

• death counts are being over-inflated; FACT
• actual numbers of cases have been under-counted; FACT
• scary, false death rates are, then, over-extrapolated; FACT
• fear-mongering media, by using these factors, are driving the panic. FACT

Bennett and Leibsohn never wrote 68,000 were expected to die, or that the 68k number was an acceptable risk versus an overreaction. In their lead paragraph, they wrote, in reference to modeling, that the IHME was “…also estimating lower ranges than that.”

With all due respect, Rich, you need to read their article again. You fixated on a number they DIDN’T write was acceptable…and missed the real point of their article…

…”A panic and hysteria over a pandemic that does not look to be what so many frightened us into thinking has radically degraded this country.”

(We’re thinking you just had a bad day.)