COVID, Hope, and Consternation

The last paragraph of your post, in my opinion, is the key to why we feel that our approaches to COVID-19 are so disjointed and divergent. When instead, they should be perceived as fingers belonging to the same hand. Support in the government’s actions is less reliant on factual information than on trust; trust that our governments and their representatives (local and federal) have our overall ‘best interest’ at heart. But, we can only trust our governments if we believe that we are part of the collective WE. The minute a significant part of any population feels as an outlier, the government has lost their trust and ultimately their ability to lead. Facts are irrelevant at that point.

I just got around to watching your recent podcast with Rich Roll on the subject of COVID-19. I must say I agree with about 98% of what you had to say, and I completely agree it's a very good thing that you shared your views on risk based interdiction. I must however, take some small issue with you over the "here we go...", politics implied in the podcast. You deride the current administration for having "no adults in the room", which is personally disingenuous at the very least and an ad hominem attack on Trump and Co. at most. You follow that with a generally disparaging view of the administrations lack of ability to adequately listen, process, understand, designed and deploy measures based on the information and approaches that you, yourself are suggesting. while that very same administration, obviously and publicly favors the risk based, harm minimization, vertical interdiction method you advocate. Couple that with the fact that you entirely discount that a group of Democratic Governors have been responsible for imposing the most severe restrictions of the citizens, businesses and institutions within their respective state. I find it interesting that you can maintain this duality of perception. Hey, don't get me wrong, we are all humans and as such, are, some would say, gifted with the ability of holding what may appear to an external observer as two conflicting views about one subject. For an example of this, I can say that my faith (in something larger than I), is an emotional state (or response), that I've developed over a couple of decades of sobriety, that has been the most important factor in allowing me to lead a life that's been productive, responsible and rewarding as a family member and citizen. Conversely to that, my intellectual perception of the world, which has driven me since childhood and allowed for a very successful career is mutually exclusive with the concept of some larger than life, divine entity at play in the day to day workings of my life in particular or the universe in general. Yet it is, that I have made a conscious decision to accept these two opposing views and not worry about the contradiction, because each one of these views, is greatly beneficially to the quality of my life. I'll end the critique portion of this post by saying, your overall message, is identical to what California ER Dr. Erickson and partner laid out in their COVID-19 press conference that was recorded, uploaded to Youtube and then quickly banned, removed from Youtube by Google, for violating "community standards". Their only infraction, so far as I could see, was to suggest a targeted approach that focused on the vulnerable members of society and allowed for harm reduction across the board for less vulnerable people and the overall economy, society in the US. So, I really hope that your message reached the right ears, of those in power that can act upon it. I think as you said, we are closing the barn doors after the animals have all run out for now, but your's and other like minded advice can be invaluable in having a helpful and positive impact on all the people of this country and other countries. Thank You so much for taking the time to volunteer your services at so many different levels.

Another aspect, I believe, is that we are at a time in human history where there are real dangers to humankind from global climate change and other issues (including the potential of more deadly pandemics) and people are looking for a way to gain control. One way is to simplify things, as either, "save lives" or "save the economy" that neatly puts you in one camp (I'm with the good guys) and its us against them (the bad guys). For most people "total harm minimization" doesn't fit the model so when they are already terrified, the pick the model that they are familiar with, even though it clearly will cause more death and make the problem worse. But at least they'll know who to blame, "them." I hope we can turn things around, but its a real challenge. Thanks for being a voice of clarity (and try not to get clobbered by both sides accusing you of being an agent for the other side).

Dr. Katz has become my favorite spokesperson/thinker/writer in regard to the response to Covid-19. He gives me confidence that there are intelligent, humble people who may be able to have influence with the powers that be.

Can someone point me to a document that lays out a decision tree or algorithm that shows first how we'd calculate someone's absolute risk of death or negative outcomes from COVID-19, and then how we'd decide who is isolated for their own benefit and who is permitted to go out into society? The idea of isolating the high risk makes sense if you can define who is high risk (or even some gradient of risk) and then what activities people at different risk levels are recommended to avoid. Absent that, I don't see how this would work in practice. For example, a 50-year-old male with diabetes may have a higher risk of complications and death from COVID-19 than a 40-year-old female with no chronic conditions. But is the risk of the 50-year-old male with diabetes sufficiently high to justify isolating him? In order for vertical interdiction to work, wouldn't we need an algorithm that calculates a similar risk score for every single person in the country, and then recommends they be isolated or not isolated (or maybe partially isolated)?