‘Following the Science’ and Risk Aversion

Peter Van DorenIn March I discussed what I described as a positive trend in the discussion of the Covid ‐​19 pandemic policy: theNew York Timesquoted an infectious disease expert about the six ‐​foot social distancing rule who admitted “There’s risk at six feet, there’s risk at three feet, there’s risk at nine feet. There’s risk always.” He added: “The question is just how much of a risk? And what do you give up in exchange? ” His characterization of the decision problem is exactly correct but does not seem to recognize that calculation of the tradeoffs is not a scientific or medical question.The latest policy scrum is about the wearing of masks outdoors. David Leonhardt hasrecentlychallenged the C.D.C. for its continued support of outdoor mask ‐​wearing. The basis for the recommendation is a characterization of the literature as concluding that “less than 10 percent” of Covid‐​19 transmission was occurring outdoors.Leonhardt plays the role of literature reviewer and concludes that many of the outdoor transmission cases in the literature come from Singapore and are probably misclassified. The author of one study classified “workplace, health care, education, social events, travel, catering, leisure and shopping” cases as outdoors. And yet even with this classification outdoor transmission cases were less than 1 percent. But one Singapore study suggested the share of Covid transmission occurring outdoor...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs