It was not long after the start of the spread of COVID-19 that state after state in the United States issued draconian stay-home orders, shutting down most businesses and banning “non-essential” travel outside of homes. Soon, the White House followed with a model that predicted that 2.2 million Americans would die absent such extreme measures. It has since become commonplace to justify extending the stay-home orders based on “science,” and to accuse anyone who opposes such draconian stay-home measures as failing to understand or acknowledge science. However, those who use their perception of science to justify these extreme measures are in fact failing to properly understand science—and its limits.
First, it is a misapprehension of science to fail to recognize the substantial and inherent uncertainties in COVID-19 models, and to treat them as a matter of fact. Where a policy decision relies on risk assessment and mitigation, a scientific model with widely varying estimates, such as the case of COVID-19, may not justify the type of actions that would be warranted in case of a model with a very high degree of certainty. For example, the White House’s model used to justify complete lockdowns was at best an educated guess that could vary within several multiples. While the White House model did not disclose its underlying assumptions, based on its projected outcome, it utilized a COVID-19 mortality rate of 1.0 – 1.5%. Yet, in New York, our country’s largest data source, the most recent anti-body tests suggest that the mortality rate of COVID-19 was only about 0.5%–one half to a third of what was assumed by the White House model. Other researchers, such as from Stanford University, have similarly found a mortality rate much lower than what was used by the White House. In fact, the White House model predicted that even with perfect, nation-wide social distancing, at least 100-300 thousand Americans would die of COVID-19. That estimate is now revised to approximately 70 thousand fatalities. Of course, Americans did not (and could not, as a factual matter) practice two to four times better than “perfect” social distancing nation-wide; rather, the underlying assumptions of the White House model were simply wrong. This is not to make a hindsight point on the errors of the White House model; rather, it is to highlight the degree of uncertainty that exists in these models, and the proper weight that should be given to them before destroying the lives of 300 million Americans in reliance on these models and as a result of treating them as facts.
While the scientific models used to justify nation-wide, months’ long shutdowns were at best uncertain, they were also incomplete. This is because the models that predict the mortality from COVID-19 only consider the benefits of the shutdowns, but do not consider their cost, both humanitarian and economically. It should go without saying that forcing people to stay home for months, many of them also losing their jobs, life savings, and hopes and dreams, will undoubtedly have substantial humanitarian and psychological, (and yes, economic) costs. For example, according to the Center for Disease Control, annually 45,000 Americans commit suicide and leave this world. Does the science used to justify the shutdowns incorporate the increase in the number of suicides from the shutdowns to determine the net benefit of the shutdowns? As another example, 13,000 Americans annually die from alcohol related causes (and many more from other controlled substance related causes). Similar points can be made for a host of other collateral shutdown impacts, ranging from depression, increase in domestic violence, increase or lack of reporting of child abuse, extreme poverty, hunger, anxiety, and many other impacts.
Nor is it necessarily the case that the impact of COVID-19 is so drastic that we can simply ignore the impact of the shutdowns. If we look at empirical data regarding how our society has balanced itself over time, even the loss of 200,000 lives would likely be outweighed by the cost of shutdowns if we remove the hysteria and emotions. For example, annually approximately 170,000 Americans die of unintentional injuries such as car accidents, and 100,000 Americans die of infectious diseases such as influenza. As another benchmark, an eight-year study by John Hopkins Medicine found that annually 250,000 Americans die of medical errors; yet, most Americans are not even aware of medical errors as a substantial risk. Annually, 500,000 Americans die of smoking related causes; yet, not only do we not ban cigarettes, we also legalize marijuana. This is because our society treats these ranges of numbers as those within the range of accepted societal risks which do not warrant extreme measures such as completely shutting down the country for months on end. Yet, in the context of addressing COVID-19, our scientific models only focus on the number of fatalities from COVID-19—without balancing the other side of the equation in terms of the impact of the shutdowns and the generally or empirically accepted incidental risk of living in a society.
The scientific models utilized to essentially bully any opposition to the lockdowns are also lacking in yet another respect. They provide only an all or nothing solution: either the country enters a complete shut down for an indefinite period to save an estimated number of lives, or we would lose, for example, 2.2 million Americans. But there is a middle ground. What if there was a solution which achieved a majority of the benefits of the lockdown without the complete destruction? For example, what if 70% of the benefits of the current lockdowns would be achieved by requiring the elderly and those with preexisting conditions to follow strict stay-home orders, and to allow the rest of the society to continue operating, albeit with increased social distancing and hygiene? The scientific models currently presented simply do not provide that option.
It may be too late to save our country from its hysterical, emotion ridden response to COVID-19. However, the sooner we open our country, the sooner we can start the road to recovery, and, in that regard, it is important to recognize that science does not only have one answer and does not only support one side. To understand science is to understand its shortcomings and uncertainties.
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