Thread by @geoffreyyork

Yesterday the DA Premier of Western Cape told people with symptoms to "take quarantine and isolation very seriously."
On the same day, the DA national leader said: "Fact 1: Covid does not pose a significant risk to healthy 0-65 year-olds."
Which DA are we to believe?

My question about DA messaging is this: when they are telling people that the virus is not a big risk, aren't they undermining their own Premier? And won't it complicate the task of persuading symptomatic people to voluntarily isolate? Why isolate if it's not a big risk?

The national DA continues to claim that COVID is no worse than the flu, for most people. (This was claimed repeatedly in the national leader's statement yesterday.) The Western Cape premier, in contrast, has never made this claim. And with good reason:

By the way, this chart is from early May, when "only" 60,000 Americans had died from the virus. Today over 111,000 have died.

The national DA cites the CDC as support for its claim that COVID is no worse than the flu. I just spoke to a CDC flu expert, who disagrees. The DA's big mistake is comparing actual confirmed COVID deaths to CDC's model of all projected flu-related deaths. Not comparable at all.

Among the sources that debunk the "same as the flu" claim:
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

This article is also useful in explaining why the flu comparison is wrong:
washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…