‘Just Follow the Science’ Shows Some Improvement

Peter Van DorenDuring summer 2020 I wrote anessay about what science can and cannot do and the role it can play in public policy decisions including those pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic. I concluded that science explains relationships between cause and effect: no more and no less. No normative conclusions about individual or collective decisions follow directly from science. Instead, costs, benefits, and other values properly enter both individual and collective decisions.I have writtenthreetimessince then about gradual recognition of this argument among medical professionals as well as journalists. I am writing again about recent columns and an editorial. I am encouraged by what I read.David Leonhardt recentlyprovided risk assessment information about COVID as well as about other more familiar risks. The average weekly chance that a person who had been vaccinated and received a booster died of Covid was about one in a million during October and November 2021. For context, the weekly auto fatality rate for Americans is more than double — about 2.4 per million. And the average weekly death rate from influenza and pneumonia is triple — about three per million. In a subsequentcolumn, he argued “public health, like the rest of life, usually involves trade‐​offs.” “People have to weigh the risks and benefits.”Jay Varma, COVID-19 advisor for former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, recentlydescribed how difficult i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs