Ioannidis followed up this opinion piece with a well-publicized research study of the coronavirus’s prevalence in Santa Clara County. The study suggested that 50–85 times more people are infected than have been confirmed by testing, and, therefore, the mortality rate is far lower than widely assumed, closer to 0.2 percent than to the commonly touted 1 percent. It immediately received widespread criticism from the media.

Like Ioannidis’s initial editorial, the study is worth scrutinizing, and its findings may or may not be valid. Many doctors and scientists, myself included, disagree with Ioannidis’s conclusions. But his conclusions are not the dangerous quackery so many treated them as; they were arrived at through a solid, evidence-based approach. The knee-jerk reaction to them was both unwarranted and telling. Those who have bought into lockdowns have done so for good reason, but seem unwilling to consider any possibility that the policy may be flawed.

Unless we as a society are willing to hear devil’s advocates such as Ioannidis out, we may continue to fall victim to groupthink in future crises. Time after time, when faced with everything from military threats to terrorism to natural catastrophes to microbial enemies, we seem to underestimate the possibility of the unexpected. Until we recognize this tendency in ourselves and work to correct it, we will continue to be caught unprepared for such Black Swan events, to our own great detriment.