What Credibility?

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal physician Joseph A. Ladapo admonishes politicians and “medical experts” that the politicization of the response to COVID-19 impairs their credibility:

Political leaders and health officials have often invoked “science” to justify decisions manifestly guided by their personal preferences. That costs them credibility. Restoring public confidence will require acknowledging their role in politicizing the pandemic, yielding to accommodations and sensible alternatives in the areas of greatest controversy, and focusing on the widely supported goal of not overwhelming hospitals, rather than less meaningful metrics such as increases in Covid-19 cases.

Recommending to politicians that they not politicize is like telling fish not to swim or birds not to fly. And credibility? For anyone who really cared there isn’t a single politician holding on to a shred of credibility in the entire country. What does credibility matter when you have a “safe seat”?

He advises:

If political leaders and health experts want to restore their credibility and the public’s confidence, they need to begin by acknowledging that politics rather than science has influenced important public-health decisions and by making accommodations for dissenting perspectives. Alternatives to masks, for instance, include physical distancing and using face shields while indoors.

And while there is more to learn about immunity, there has not been a single confirmed case of reinfection among the 10 million cases of Covid-19 world-wide, according to a May report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Until the data say otherwise, people who have recovered from Covid-19 should be exempt from restrictions.

The most important step political leaders and health officials can take is to base their decisions on hospital capacity, rather than case counts, which inevitably will continue to increase among low-risk young people. Policing of social distance and restrictions on personal, educational and business activities are fueling culture wars. Focusing on the goal of not overwhelming hospitals is sensible and less vulnerable to politicization—so long as the data are publicly available for independent analysis. Hospitals often run near capacity to maximize profits, so the promises made during shutdowns to increase capacity need to be fulfilled—or capacity will become a political weapon.

Since citizens are already opting out of high-risk activities they want to avoid, let them enter bars, enjoy the beach, exercise at the gym, and learn in school if they choose. The government should intervene with mandates and closures only if regional hospital capacity requires it, while being transparent about bed availability, illness severity of hospitalized patients, and efforts to increase treatment capacity, including the supply of promising medications such as remdesivir and dexamethasone.

Here in Illinois only 10% of ICU beds are presently occupied by patients with COVID-19. In Chicago I suspect that more ICU beds are occupied by gunshot victims than people with COVID-19.