It's getting increasingly hard to take John Ioannidis's "let's keep to the science" line seriously. My postdoc advisor Bruce Levin said "What distinguishes science from the rest of academia is that in science, you can't predict the conclusion from the name of the author."
I don't actually agree with that as a literal statement (and offered a "proof" of why it's wrong 10y ago at Bruce's 70th birthday. But it gets at a deep truth that serious scientists keep seeking evidence that they are wrong so they can get righter.
This is quite a run of papers saying "see, my priors were right" from Dr. Ioannidis. Punctuated with occasional appearances in front of such truth-seeking bodies as Laura Ingraham's show and the Arizona House of Representatives.
Particularly because if the IFR is in the middle of his claimed range (0.2%), which it very likely isn't, and if the proportion at risk of getting infected is 5-10x seasonal flu, then the policy conclusion is we need to prevent crashing health systems.
There is no actual policy content to the debate as he and sidekicks have been framing it. It is extremely hard to construct a scientifically admirable motive for doing one readily criticized study after another and promoting it on noted anti-science talk shows.
