The case for optimism

No one should underestimate the urgent issues facing the United States and the world from the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of people have already died, and thousands more are in critical condition. The death totals will certainly increase for weeks, even in the best-case projections. Serious likely shortages, as projected by Murray and the Health Metrics Sciences group, represent a crisis, and all efforts are required to minimize them. But fear about worst-case scenarios has at times obscured certain facts that should lend some optimism to what’s ahead.

First, the rate...