Cures vs. Diseases

In this piece at RealClearScience author Danny Dorling really puts his finger on one of the major impediments in formulating good policy for dealing with COVID-19:

In 1968, at the height of the last great influenza pandemic, at least a million people worldwide died, including 100,000 Americans. That year A.M.M. Payne, a professor of epidemiology at Yale University, wrote:

In the conquest of Mount Everest anything less than 100% success is failure, but in most communicable diseases we are not faced with the attainment of such absolute goals, but rather with trying to reduce the problem to tolerable levels, as quickly as possible, within the limits of available resources…

That message is worth repeating because the schism between those seeking “absolute goals” versus those seeking “tolerable levels” is very much evident in the current pandemic. On September 21, the BMJ reported that opinion among UK scientists is divided as to whether it is better to focus on protecting those most at risk of severe COVID, or imposing lockdown for all.

One group of 40 scientists wrote a letter to the chief medical officers of the UK suggesting that they should aim to “suppress the virus across the entire population”.

In another letter, a group of 28 scientists suggested that “the large variation in risk by age and health status suggests that the harm caused by uniform policies (that apply to all persons) will outweigh the benefits”. Instead, they called for a “targeted and evidence-based approach to the COVID-19 policy response”.

Read the whole thing. That, too, is the underlying issue in a frequent commenter’s observation yesterday:

I think avoidance is the first order precaution, masks are secondary. But everybody treats mask as something far too important, either as a force field that protects the righteous or a symbol of enslavement.

Such politicization does not serve us well but that’s what we are facing. It’s definitely an impediment in forming good policy.