Critics of the Harvard University psychologist and optimistic data-phile are likely feeling a sense of vindication amid the COVID-19 crisis. Pinker, who is known for looking at the silver linings in a world that is seemingly falling apart due to violence, division, and climate change, uses historical trends in data to suggests that our fears are misplaced. In fact, he believes we live in the most peaceful, healthy and interconnected era of human existence. As his book Enlightenment Now suggests, all our fear is better replaced by optimism for what the future may hold.

With a pandemic raging through much of the world — most aggressively in Europe and the United States — Pinker’s plans for the future may have been upended, at least for now. But, Pinker’s optimism doesn’t come from some earnest worldview; it comes from the data. As the data about COVID-19 continues to grow, Pinker may feel a sense of vindication himself.

Several weeks ago, when Imperial College London (ICL) published a report suggesting that as many as 500,000 UK citizens could perish if no or few actions were taken to curb the spread of the virus, the world responsibly took notice. Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson quickly changed his tune on how to respond to the disease. Closures of pubs and restaurants and social distancing recommendations replaced an initially guarded and conservative response. Eventually, this culminated in a lockdown of the United Kingdom. Many other nations took heed from the ICL report as well, fearful that this disease was no ordinary flu and could risk the lives of many of their citizens.

I must admit that I was one of those most fearful for the outcome of the pandemic, preparing for a long ordeal and worrying about the most at risk in my family. I was the guy frantically sharing articles and facts about the virus and condemning the inaction of President Donald J. Trump. While those worries and criticisms have not changed, they are now put to some ease. With more data coming as a result of testing and scientific modeling of the disease, the outlook on our collective future may be looking up.

This optimism has begun to take shape recently, with the lead researcher on the ICL report, Neil Ferguson, adjusting his prediction from half a million British deaths to fewer than 20,000. This adjustment is based significantly on the restrictions put into place by the British government and how they can slow the spread and needless deaths caused by an overload of its National Health Service. More importantly, he has suggested that the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for the virus is not as deadly as the 0.9 percent initially published.

This figure may come as a shock to many, with Italy currently reporting a CFR of about 11 percent. Nearly as grim, Spain is reporting a CFR at just over 8 percent, and France is sitting at 5 percent. The dour news in much of Europe is why the data coming out of Germany becomes so promising. The Germans currently have the fourth most cases in the world, but their reality is much different than their European neighbors. According to the Robert Koch Institute, their CFR is currently at 1.1 percent, which nearly matches the ICL report and is noticeably smaller than the other nations presently facing high infection numbers. According to Dr. Christian Drosten, a virologist at Berlin’s Charité University Hospital, Germany is averaging 500,000 COVID-19 tests a week. Germany also plans to increase its capacity to 200,000 a day. For context, the US has tested about 1 in 330 Americans to date, while Germany’s pace puts them on track to test 1 in 180 Germans per week. As Germany continues to ramp up testing, its numbers may continue to appear more promising than the rest of the world.

Many factors may suggest why Germany is reporting numbers that conflict with the rest of the world, such as the ages of those infected, what stage of the infection they are in, and its number of available critical care beds. However, it may also suggest that the severity and deadliness of this disease are not what global figures indicate. Due to its extensive testing, Germany may be providing a broader image of how the COVID-19 virus affects us.

Unfortunately, the promising data from Germany does nothing to explain the crisis in Italy, where they will soon pass 14,000 fatalities as a result of the disease. One possibility is that many of the countries most affected by the virus have not performed the degree of testing needed to grasp the scale of their infections accurately. In the US, Italy, and Spain, many public health and government officials have stressed their need for broader testing. The Lancet suggests that around 72 percent of cases have gone unreported in Italy, which helps explain the degree of carnage currently being experienced there, relative to their confirmed infections. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has talked about how his state is performing more testing than anywhere in the country, which is true — New York represents 25 percent of all testing in the US. But, in the largest city in the United States, and one of the most densely populated, the scale of testing currently being practiced is likely not providing the actual degree of infection. Even German health officials do not believe that they have an accurate picture of the spread of the disease, despite the scale of the country’s testing.

Without further testing, it will be impossible to understand truly how deadly COVID-19 is. In the meantime, several academic and scientific institutions are trying to fill in the blanks. According to a team of researchers at the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infection Diseases, a recent report suggests the confirmed cases of COVID-19 only represent 1 in 20 of those infected with the virus in the UK. If their estimate is accurate and applied to other areas of infection, it would suggest that nearly five million individuals may have contracted the disease in the United States alone. Additionally, the Director of the CDC recently asserted that 1 in 4 of those infected shows no symptoms. These hypotheses would also explain why Spain, Northern Italy and New York City are currently at battle with the virus and doing their best to treat victims in healthcare systems that were unprepared to deal with this scale of infection.

If modeling of this sort is correct, or even half right, it may mean that the current social distancing measures and restrictions on movement may not need to last for as many months, or even a year, as initially believed by experts. William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, recently told The Atlantic that it could range anywhere from one month to a year — although he suggested that a month was a somewhat unlikely outcome. The length of this ordeal will largely depend on how many people are truly infected with the disease, and how far along in the pandemic we currently are. As Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested in the March 31st COVID-19 task force briefing, the models are only as good as the data you put into them. Considering the data regarding morbidity and severity of the disease has only become more promising in recent weeks, that is good news for all of us.

In a more controversial model of the pandemic, Oxford University theoretical epidemiologists, led by Sunestra Gupta, recently proposed that COVID-19 may have already infected half of the population in the UK. This study has been met with significant controversy, with many criticizing the methods used to reach this conclusion. However, the modeling does support that there is reason to suggest that the pandemic may be in a later stage than we currently believe. Much like the other studies proposing that testing is not providing the fullest picture of the pandemic, even if its hypothesis is fractionally correct, it may mean that we are not facing a year of social distancing.

Many scientists are betting on this, too. In Telluride, the small Colorado ski town, a biotech company is planning to test the entire town for antibodies of the virus. Antibody tests would allow for public health officials to determine how many have already been infected with the disease and are now likely immune. The company, United Biomedical, hopes to expand the testing to more highly infected areas of the United States in the coming weeks. In addition to broadening testing for those currently infected, Germany also plans to roll out antibody testing in several intervals, testing 100,000 subjects at a time, according to Der Spiegel. Testing of this scale could allow for segments of the population to return to a normal life, whatever that may mean.

Luckily, this virus is certainly not as deadly as the global CFR indicates. The skewed morbidity due to healthcare systems, through no fault of their own, being unprepared for the deluge of patients, under-testing in many of the countries most affected, and no clear understanding of the scale of the infection means that there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Much like Pinker asserts, the data can have much less doom and gloom than the pathos in many news and opinion pieces. Yet, only time will tell if the incoming data will paint a rosier picture of the future. In the meantime, we are doing exactly what we need to be doing; social distancing, banning large gatherings, and restrictions on normal life have already begun to slow the spread of the virus.

Right now, it doesn’t matter what stage of the pandemic we are in, or whether the virus is ten or one hundred times more deadly than the seasonal flu. What we do know is that we are facing a disease that is deadly, highly contagious and unknown to all of us. The White House suggested in a recent model that the best-case scenario could see between 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the US in the coming months. All these factors mean that we can’t take half measures or work outside of the data. Hopefully, as more data comes in, the models will continue to suggest a better outcome and make our common enemy seems less and less dangerous.

Image Credit: Centers for Disease Control