Was that meant for me? Because I don’t think I characterized either one of them in that way.
You appear to have been very impressed with Atlas and Bhattacharya:
Did I misunderstand your support of them?
I am very impressed with them both, yes.
Were you as impressed with Dr. Fauci?
I have not been, no. When his career gets a retrospective, I don’t think 2020 will be seen as his finest hour.
Thank you. No more questions are really necessary, I think. We now know where you set(or perhaps bury) the bar.
How do you reconcile their position with that of the majority of medical professionals and scientists?
How do I reconcile it? They have different points of view. Their positions do not reconcile.
If you mean to ask how it’s possible that I can believe the majority is wrong in this case – or I guess ever – then that’s a whole other question altogether. Maybe I believe both sides are right about some things and wrong about some things, and it will take a while for that all to get sorted out. But do I believe that either side has a monopoly on correctness? Absolutely not.
Do you believe that the herd immunity approach is a viable alternative to the one being put forward by the majority in the medical science community?
I believe that herd immunity – at least to some extent, and by that I mean that you no longer, and will no longer, see rapid and wide spread – has already happened in a significant number of places. I believe that it’s a natural phenomenon and not a boogeyman. In fact, I believe the notion that viruses can be limited in their ability to spread in populations where many humans have already been exposed to them is perfectly in accord with scientific principles.
What is it exactly that you mean by the approach being put forward by the majority? If you’re asking me if I think there would be some natural end to the pandemic if there were no vaccines, then I would say yes.
I would rather you tell us why specifically you support Atlas.
Well, the plague was a natural phenomenon. It too spread mostly uncontrolled. It did not kill everyone. Similarly the Spanish flu. But the thing with both of these events, among other pandemics, is that people figured out how they are transmitted and took steps to socially distance populations to prevent transmission.
That is not a limitation of spread. The spread continues. That people already infected develop an natural immunity - provided they survive the illness or show minimal symptoms - does not mean the spread has stopped. It means it is no longer a threat to the remaining population that has been exposed. People who have not been exposed can and will get infected and die. There are clear examples of that in recorded medical history. Eventually a virus becomes less of a threat but at what cost to human lives? How many human lives would you be willing to risk to achieve herd immunity? If economy is your greater concern, have you considered the economic costs of a sick and dying population in uncontrolled numbers?
It seems there is a light at the end of the tunnel with the emerging vaccines. Measures of social distancing and mask wearing, while not universally achieved, have saved lives. Demonstrably to a greater effect in some countries than others. How many lives would you be willing to risk/sacrifice between now and an effective vaccine treatment by eliminating social distancing and mask wearing policies? If we continue to advise and enforce social distancing and mask wearing until vaccines are available and we still lose X population, would you consider it acceptable to lose 5X or 3X of the population just to eliminate the necessity of social distancing between now and then?
I’m asking because I’m curious about your reasoning process and risk analysis.
Didn’t you claim that it had happened in NY and NJ, or am I think of another poster? In any case, it clearly hasn’t, because we’re seeing quite the spike here in NJ even though lots of things are still closed and lots of people are masked.
While I greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and hope you are right about some of those things, where you and I are going to differ in our reasoning processes and risk analyses is that I am never going to look back at what happened – and I do think the worst is behind us, for the reasons we’re talking about with exposure and immunity and vaccines – and characterize it as ‘a sick and dying population in uncontrolled numbers’. I think we just approach it very differently. The way you put it makes it sound tragic on a epic scale. I think deaths have been up about ten percent this year, and deaths from the virus don’t appear to have distributed themselves any differently than deaths from everything else, as far as age goes.
All those trolley problem questions are well above my pay grade, which I think can be said for just about everyone else too. But I do firmly believe that they are far, far more complicated questions than they are made out to be. And I do suspect that if there indeed is an answer that minimizes suffering, it’s one that would make a lot of people very uncomfortable, perhaps yourself included.
Oooh, mysterious.
That is why one should look about what his peers think about what Atlas said and did. They are not impressed.
A resolution, introduced by members of the Faculty Senate Steering Committee and approved by 85 percent of the senate membership, specified six actions that Atlas has taken that “promote a view of COVID-19 that contradicts medical science.”
Among the actions cited are: discouraging the use of masks and other protective measures, misrepresenting knowledge and opinion regarding the management of pandemics, endangering citizens and public officials, showing disdain for established medical knowledge and damaging Stanford’s reputation and academic standing. The resolution states that Atlas’ behavior is “anathema to our community, our values and our belief that we should use knowledge for good.”
The resolution singles out for criticism Atlas’ recent Twitter call to the people of Michigan to “rise up” against new public health measures introduced by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to curb disease spread.
“As elected representatives of the Stanford faculty, we strongly condemn his behavior,” the resolution states. “It violates the core values of our faculty and the expectations under the Stanford Code of Conduct, which states that we all ‘are responsible for sustaining the high ethical standards of this institution.’”
Pardon my uncharitable interpretation, but what you appear to be saying is that life is cheap and survivors should be minimally inconvenienced.
May I ask, have you had the misfortune of losing anyone close to you or close to those you love as a result of becoming ill with this virus?
To add, I might be convinced, and it wouldn’t take much to do so, that if we took a “survival of the fittest” approach to this pandemic, then once we got past the pain, we’d be sailing home free with a much more what… strong? genetic pool. Except that’s not how any of this works, you see. The ability to overcome one type of virus does not ensure the ability to survive the next pandemic. In fact some who do not survive this one may very well have been immune to whatever is next. I’m saying this just in case that’s where you were heading with the very cryptic last sentence.
All I meant with that last sentence is that if there really is a proper solution to those inequalities you were proposing, it’s probably not the one you think it is, given the approach you are taking. I don’t know that that means ‘life is cheap’, but I think you’re looking at it in a very uncharitable way indeed by characterizing it as ‘survivors should be minimally inconvenienced’. We’re not talking about minimal inconvenience. We are talking about far-reaching impacts, devastating for many, in at least one of several different ways, and much more than an inconvenience for much of the rest of them, such as the students who are now looking at two highly disrupted years of their education. (And ‘highly disrupted’ is putting it, as you say, charitably.) And we’re talking about a pool of ‘survivors’ that so far outnumbers the deceased and damaged as to render their count infinitesimal.
If you want to do it as a sort of calculus, you have to be honest about the parameters.
And no, I have not had that misfortune. Nor has the great, great, great majority of the world.
Three relatives, seven close friends, seventeen acquaintances to date…and that is just counting deaths, not all the illness and damage also, which you constantly ignore. “Great, great, great majority” my ass.
No, I think I understand what you mean and I agree that the social distancing restrictions imposed came at a high price. When I say that you believe the loss of an academic year or two for a lot of students was too high a price to pay in an effort to prevent further spread of the virus and thus a larger loss of life, that is what I mean when I compare minimal and maximum inconvenience. I think you consider it to be a maximal amount of inconvenience and you would have like to have seen a minimal amount. That is, no school closings, little to no non-essential business closings, little to no restriction on travel, etc. Am I correct? Do you believe the economic price paid to date was too high, and resulting inconvenience costs too dear, in the effort to save lives? In other words, ‘Sure, some lives were saved, but at what cost and were they worth saving?’