Why A Covid Vaccine Will NOT Lead to a Return to Normal

First, there has been considerable socioeconomic and political fallout from the pandemic and the failure of governments to protect their citizens, both physically and financially, that will forever change how people interact and earn a living. Many businesses have gone under and will never return. It’s been estimated that 50% of all U.S. restaurants and museums will never come back. Many businesses are realizing they function just as effectively with their employees working from home, so why return to office building and continue paying rent and utilities?

But from a purely medical perspective, the idea that a vaccine will suddenly or even slowly allow us to gather in large crowds without masks may be pie in the sky, and here’s why:

1.      For things to truly go “back to normal,” which I believe, for most people, means being able to gather in large groups, indoors, without masks, without obsessive handwashing, without anxiety that anyone in the room might be another super spreader, AND being able to send their kids back to daily, 100%, in-person school, there would have to be enough immunity in the population for the virus to die out and disappear completely. Experts use the term “Herd Immunity” to refer to this condition.

2.      We have fully achieved herd immunity with Smallpox, which is now considered extinct, through a combination of an incredibly effective vaccine and an incredibly effective worldwide collaboration to distribute and administer the vaccine. We’ve come close to eradicating Polio. The reason we have not is due to several factors, including governmental policy failures in several countries, but also because Polio immunity is much more complex than Smallpox immunity and creating effective vaccines has been much more difficult. Similarly, with mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria and many other deadly scourges of past centuries, we’ve come close, but because of anti-vax hysteria (people refusing the vaccines for their children out of the irrational and scientifically debunked fear that the vaccine was more dangerous than the disease), outbreaks continue to crop up.

3.      To reach herd immunity, we need 60-80% of the population to be immune. Herd immunity means that enough people have acquired immunity that the virus can no longer take hold in the community, even though some people may still be susceptible.

4.      Problem #1: we still don’t know how effective the Covid-19 vaccine will be. If it’s 70% effective (meaning 70% of those who get it will develop immunity) and 80% of the population receive it, the result will be 56% of the population develops immunity (70% x 80% = 56%)—probably too low to reach herd immunity.

a.      The FDA has said it will accept any vaccine that proves to be safe and at least 50% effective. Yet no manufacturer has yet completed their studies and published any data on their vaccine’s effectiveness, so this is still a big unknown.

b.      50% effectiveness won’t get us close. Even if 100% of Americans get a vaccine that’s only 50% effective, we’d end up with only 50% of the population acquiring immunity

5.      Problem #2: In the U.S., over 20% of the population has vaccine hysteria and has said they will refuse any vaccine, period, end of story. Another 30% is still on the fence. According to CIDRAP, roughly 51% of Americans said they’d get the vaccine. And in the most recent studies of people's willingness to take the vaccine, researchers found that only 51% of people would take the vaccine if it's only 50% effective, and only 61% if the vaccine was 90% effective. Both of these rates are too low to create herd immunity. So, if we do nothing to change this (as we’ve done so far), that leaves only 40-50% of the population that would get vaccinated. So, even if the vaccine is 100% effective (and no vaccine is), we will end up with only 50-60% of the population acquiring immunity, which is far too low to reach herd immunity. This could change, easily, with an effective and vigorous public health outreach campaign (e.g., TV, billboards, social media, etc, promoting how the road to normalcy is developing herd immunity, and the quickest way to herd immunity is for everyone to get vaccinated), combined with strong public health policies (e.g., no one is allowed into school or the workplace without proof of having been vaccinated).

6.      Problem #3: We don’t yet know if the covid-19 vaccine will produce full or partial immunity. Coronaviruses, in general, and covid-19, specifically, tend to produce partial, short-term immunity in those who have been infected. Consequently, people can, and have, caught Covid-19 twice. And the second bout can actually cause worse symptoms than the first one. Vaccines tend to produce more robust immune responses than actual infections, due in part to dosing and the use of adjuvants. Even so, the covid-19 vaccine might still only produce partial or short-term immunity and/or require regular boosters. If this is the case, it would be much hard to reach herd immunity, as people would have to remember to go in for their regular boosters.

7.      Problem #4: Coronaviruses are RNA viruses (they contain no DNA), which tend to mutate and evolve at a much higher rate than DNA viruses (like pox viruses). Consequently, we may be faced with new strains and even new species of deadly coronaviruses each year, requiring completely new vaccines each year, as is the case with influenza. Many of the vaccines currently under testing for covid-19 are designed to recognize the spike protein common to all coronaviruses, which, theoretically, would protect us against all new coronaviruses, but it remains to be seen if this will in fact be true. It is entirely possible that covid-19, or some other coronavirus, will evolve the ability to evade the vaccine.

8.      Problem #5: Vaccines often have varying degrees of efficacy in different age and health cohorts. For example, the covid vaccine might be 80% effective for healthy 20 to 50-year-olds, but only 40-50% effective for infants and toddlers or for those over the age of 80.

9.      Problem #6: Even if one of the vaccines completes its clinical trial by the end of the year, it could take another 6-12 months before enough can be produced and distributed to the general public. So, even if it turns out to be 90% effective, and even if 70-90% of the population agree to take it, masks and distancing will not be going away soon. Some experts are saying we should brace for another 2-3 years of masks and social distancing.

 

Why Aren't the Democrats Fighting Back?

 

Trump has repeatedly said there won’t be a peaceful transition of power if he loses. He’s also said he wants to stay in power 3 or more terms. All of these are clearly unconstitutional. They clearly indicate his desire to rule the country as a dictator. And if it were to pass, it would be tantamount to a coup d’etat.

 

Yet no Democrats are calling for impeachment hearings. None are calling for Trump’s immediate removal from office, or Congressional hearings into the coup plot. They’ve even dropped all attempts to delay the SCOTUS nomination until after the election, which essentially hands Trump the most powerful weapon he has for carrying out his coup: Appealing to the Supreme Court to give him the victory, as they did for George W Bush. The only difference is that the Court was already far more right wing before RBG died than it was in 2000. Add one more right-winger, 3 of whom would be Trump appointees, and the odds in his favor go up even more.

 

Pelosi and Schumer, the 2 top Dems, could barely muster feckless pleas for the Republicans to do the “right thing.” Fat chance, and they knew it. The only Dem to make any speech-length argument on Thursday was Bernie Sanders. But the only solution he could come up with was to beg everyone to vote, arguing that a Biden landslide would make it impossible for Trump to deny the vote. He even told us to drop our fight for “an agenda that works for all, and not just a few” until after Biden is elected, in a desperate appeal to win his base over to Biden, while not alienating Biden’s corporate backers.

 

Of course, nothing makes it impossible for Trump to deny the vote. He denies things daily that are far less controversial. And if he is willing to publicly conspire to violate the constitution, why should anyone believe that the scale of his loss would matter to him? He’ll just say it was rigged.

 

The Sanders argument (which is also being made in editorials and by other politicians), is essentially a concession in advance. Biden only needs to win by 1 electoral college vote for it to be a legitimate victory. Not 200, nor even 1000. The Sanders argument implicitly allows Trump to interpret anything less than a landslide as justification to stay in power if he loses.

 

Even Biden has dropped his earlier arguments that Trump was attempting to create a dictatorship, adopting the naïve and conciliatory stance that it’s all just bluster and there’s nothing to it. But if that was true, then why the rush to get a new right-wing supreme court justice seated before the elections?

 

Ultimately, the Democrats would much rather hold their noses and accept another 25-40 years of a right-wing court, and a potential Trump dictatorship, and along with it, all the violence and death he has threatened to unleash against his opponents and protesters, than face the prospect of a working class revolt that spins out of their control. Indeed, that is exactly what Trump’s threats of post-election state repression are intended to do: suppress any resistance by workers, students, immigrants, middle class liberals.

 

This is why Dems focused on Russiagate in their impeachment attempt, instead of the crimes Trump has publicly confessed to (no chance of workers rising up over this issue). This is why the Democratic Party and its billionaire supporters have all embraced the BLM movement, since it corrals mass public outrage into harmless demands for racial justice that pose no threat to capitalism or their wealth. Even better, its philosophical underpinning, Critical Race Theory, is entirely consistent with the identity politics they’ve adopted to replace their traditional base in the labor movement. We don’t need to pay people more or provide them with healthcare or affordable housing. We just need more woman and people of color in the boardrooms and in Congress.

 

Imagine what might happen if the thousands of people who’ve been protesting in the streets for racial justice were to suddenly start demanding the arrest of the CEOs and corporate boards of Amazon, Tyson, GM, Tesla, and Universities, for profiteering off the pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black, Latino and Indigenous people. Or the arrest of Trump for mass murder, for lying to the public about the dangers of Covid (as confirmed in the Woodward tapes), and his herd immunity policy, which has killed 208,600 Americans (again, disproportionately black and brown). Or if they were to change their chant from “Black Lives Matter” to “Workers’ Lives Matter.” What if, instead demanding the cops stop killing black people, they were to demand that the cops stop killing poor people (the overwhelming majority of victims of cop shooting are poor)? Or, instead of handing over trillions of dollars to Wall Street, they demanded trillions to the unemployed, underemployed, and those who don’t earn enough to support their families? “Not Dying for Wall Street!” And how about demanding that trillions more be spent to ramp up testing, contact tracing and PPE for truly essential workers, and free healthcare for all? Or trillions to convert our infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewables, and the creation of a green new deal with good paying, green union jobs for local communities? And what if they demanded that the money to pay for all this came from the trillions we currently spend on subsidies to corporations? And from higher corporate and capital gains taxes? How about increased taxes on stock market transactions and mineral extraction? And slashing the military budget and making peace with Russia, China, Iran, instead of constantly competing with them for hegemony?

 

While all these are completely reasonable demands, and most are desired by the majority of Americans, they would be interpreted by our leaders, Dems and Repubs, alike, as a threat to their wealth and power, particularly if they were being yelled in the street by mobs. Even more so, if those demands were accompanied by trash fires, vandalism and looting.

 

Our leaders know full well that, as the pandemic persists and likely worsens in the coming months; as more and more people become destitute because of lost jobs, evictions, foreclosures, and death and illness to family bread winners; as people become increasingly desperate to go outside and play, socialize, spend time with friends and family; as climate crises (like deadly fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, floods, droughts and food shortages) become more common and more destructive; people will become more desperate, angry and willing to go out into the streets and protest. And their protests could very well become more aggressive and violent than what we’ve seen so far.

 

This is what both parties of Wall Street fear the most. And what a Trump dictatorship promises to quell, through state violence and the violence of his shock troop supporters.

 

But what if Biden is right and it is all just bluster?

 

Trump could still win legitimately. Or, perhaps Biden will win, despite offering his supporters nothing other than “I’m not Trump.” Either way, there are a lot of quite important things, (possibly the most important things), that simply won’t change. Here’s what we can expect in 2021:

·        a continuation of the herd immunity policy and hundreds of thousands more covid deaths

·        no serious investment in public health or plan to provide free or cheap healthcare for all

·        no effective plan to curtail the climate crisis and, consequently, an increasing number of people displaced and killed because of it

·        no significant change to policing, or reduction in the 1,000 people killed by cops each year, nor even a reduction in the disproportionate number of black people killed by the police

·        no reduction in the number of immigrants deported nor an effective path toward citizenship

·        continuing provocations with China and/or Russia, bringing us closer to nuclear war

·        continued bailouts for Wall Street and the country’s largest corporations; peanuts, or nothing, to the poorest and most destitute members of society

·        a wealth gap that continues to grow worse, increasing class tensions and threat of popular uprisings

·        If we are lucky, we’ll get a vaccine that has an 80% effectiveness, but that still can’t end the pandemic.  Here’s why:

o   51% of Americans have said they would either refuse it, no matter what, or they were scared and unlikely to take the vaccine,

o   Without a public health campaign to educate and encourage vaccine use (and there has been none to date), the best we can hope for would be 40-50% of the public gaining immunity, which is not enough for full herd immunity, as too many people would still be vulnerable and could catch and spread the virus

o   (80% effectiveness x 50% vaccination rate = 40% of the public gains immunity)

Pandemic May Not End If We Don't Address Anti-Vax Hysteria

The quickest way to end the Covid-19 pandemic is by reaching herd immunity, which is to say, getting enough people immune to the disease that it no longer spreads easily, thus protecting everyone, including those few who still haven't acquired immunity. Typically, there are two ways to reach herd immunity: mass vaccination programs, which have effectively eradicated many deadly diseases in the U.S. (e.g., small pox, tetanus, polio, diphtheria) and mass infection. Problem is, unlike influenza, chickenpox, mumps, measles and many other familiar diseases, Covid-19 infection does not appear to produce long-lasting or robust immunity, meaning people could, theoretically, catch it multiple times and continue spreading it through the community. This leaves mass vaccination as our best hope.

Anthony Fauci said he was cautiously optimistic that by the end of 2020, we would have data confirming that at least one of the current vaccines being tested for Covid 19 was safe and effective. In theory, that could mean we'd have enough doses by mid-2021 to vaccinate a sufficient number of Americans to reach herd immunity, thus bringing an end to the pandemic. (For the current status of vaccine trials, click here).

Problem is, 20% of Americans say they will refuse to take the vaccine, and another 31% say they are unsure. So, even if the vaccine was 100% effective (no vaccine is), that would mean only 49% of American would develop immunity, which is not enough to reach herd immunity. Consequently, the virus would continue to spread through communities, sickening and killing people. In reality, a vaccine could be approved if it is at least 50% effective. So, worst-case scenario, we get a 50% effective vaccine, with only 49% of Americans taking it, and we end up with only 24.5% immunity, far far away from the 60-75% needed to reach herd immunity.

While it is easy to disparage these anti-vaxxers as stupid or selfish (the behavior certainly is), doing so won't browbeat or shame them into changing their behavior and is, therefore, unproductive. And at this critical time, it is imperative to find solutions that are effective. If the 31% of Americans who are on the fence can be convinced to change their minds, we'd have 80% of Americans willing to take the vaccine, and that COULD bring us to herd immunity (assuming the vaccine was 75% effective).

Part of the problem, of course, is STUPID and SELFISH behavior by politicians, particularly Trump, which have contributed to the misperception that this disease is not that serious or that it's a hoax. As long as people believe this, why should they want to do anything inconvenient or unpleasant (like wear masks & socially distance themselves), or that they erroneously believe is risky (like get vaccinated)? So, the first challenge will be getting all leaders and media to start listening to, respecting and complying with the health experts and encouraging the rest of us to do so, too.

However, there were already plenty of Americans who were terrified of vaccines well before the current pandemic started. So, even if all leaders were to suddenly start wearing masks and telling everyone to comply with social distancing policies, these people might still refuse to take the vaccine, thus perpetuating the pandemic. Therefore, we also need a well-researched and well-executed public health campaign that acknowledges their fears, but then convinces them of the safety of the vaccines and encourages them to participate in the mass vaccination program, not only for their own health and safety, but because it will help end the pandemic and return us to normal more quickly.

Why It's Hard for Americans to Trust the Experts

Is it any wonder that Americans don’t trust politicians, American institutions, even scientists? That they continue to go to crowded public places without masks, deny that covid infects children or that they can spread it to vulnerable adults, in spite of the solid evidence to the contrary?

Why should they trust the scientists when the scientists keep changing the “science?”

Certainly, part of the problem is the general public’s lack of understanding of how science works: Scientists makes hypotheses based on current data and then constantly revise and improve those hypotheses as new data comes in. Thus, what was considered the best explanation in February could look significantly different today, now that we have so much more data on how covid-19 spreads and how it affects the body. This can be confusing and frustrating to the lay person, particularly when politicians and the media continue to hype the now discredited preliminary data. Consider how many people still believe that vaccines cause autism, even after this myth has been repeatedly disproven in controlled scientific studies, (an excellent article on this topic here) and even after its main proponent, Andrew Wakefield, had his medical license revoked for publishing the fraudulent data behind this myth.

But there is a bigger problem when supposedly objective scientists make public statements about what is considered best scientific practice that are NOT based on scientific evidence at all, but on the dictates of politicians and capitalists, which is exactly what the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) seemed to be doing this week by buckling to the demands of Donald Trump and agreeing to change their guidelines for how to reopen K-12 schools, thus facilitating Trump’s dictate that ALL SCHOOLS MUST REOPEN ASAP.

In a glaring example, CDC director Robert Redfield said there’s no evidence that children drive the spread of coronavirus. While it is true there are many factors driving this pandemic (e.g., stupid back-to-work policies that force workers and consumers together without adequate PPE; people cramming into bars without masks; poorly trained and equipped employees at assisted living facilities and prisons), to say that children do not drive the pandemic is scientifically inaccurate and misleading. It implies that we don’t need to worry about sending our kids into crowded classrooms, that they are not going to bring the virus home and expose vulnerable family members, and that reopening schools will have little or no effect on the number of new infections.

It is so misleading and dangerous that even Trump’s own controversial health advisor, Deborah Birx, had to back away from Redfield’s statement, saying there isn’t enough data to arrive at that conclusion; the data is complete. Not enough children have been tested.

But we do have compelling evidence that kids catch the virus at the same rate as adults from two different studies, one from Germany and one from China. And this study from Switzerland, published on the CDC’s own website just last week, shows that symptomatic children shed just as much virus as adults, indicating they can, indeed, spread the virus to others. (Which makes one wonder if the CDC director even looks at his agency’s own website, let alone reads the latest scientific studies).

We also have considerable anecdotal evidence of the virus spreading in schools and daycare facilities, including among children. There were 950 infections at Texas childcare centers as of the end of June, with a third of the cases occurring among the children. And, as the UK reopened, schools there quickly become the second leading source of new outbreaks, after home care centers. France and Israel had to close schools soon after reopening because of new outbreaks among kids. There was also a cluster of juvenile infections after a high school swim party in Arkansas. And nearly an entire class in Quebec contracted covid, despite physical distancing and hygiene measures, after an infected student came to class, which strongly supports the hypothesis that children can, indeed, drive the spread.

Many back-to-school proponents argue that kids don’t get as sick as adults and rarely ever die. While this is true, statistically-speaking, it does not justify reopening schools. First, and most significantly, if kids can transmit the disease, and the evidence shows that they can, then they can spread it to vulnerable staff and family members. With one-third of all teachers being at elevated risk of severe symptoms and death due to age and underlying health conditions, not to mention all the children living with grandparents, and all those living with family members who have diabetes, heart disease, cancer, kidney and liver disease, reopening the schools would be criminal!

However, kids do catch the virus and sometimes get quite ill and die. Based on the preliminary and incomplete data we have, in many parts of the U.S. and Europe, mortality rates for children age 10-19 are in the range of 0.1-0.5%. These numbers probably reflect only the minority of infections that were symptomatic and bad enough to require treatment and/or hospitalization. Consequently, the sample sizes are small and the percentages are likely inflated. But if we divide these percentages by 10, since it’s estimated that there are 10 times as many infections as are currently documented, that would bring the mortality rate down to 0.01-0.05%. With roughly 50 million K-12 students in the U.S., if 50% of them contracted the virus, and 0.01-0.05% died, there would be 2,500-12,500 juvenile deaths. This, too, should make us question the safety and efficacy of reopening the schools.

If it wasn’t safe to go to school in May, when most of the nation’s schools were first shut down and infection rates were miniscule compared with today, then why would it be safe to return to school in August and September, when infection rates are going out the roof? Especially with watered down “safety” protocols?

Last night, I watched a San Francisco Unified School District Town Hall Meeting on Reopening, in which an unprepared and incompetent representative from San Francisco’s Department of Public Health bumbled incoherently through a set of talking points on school “safety” measures she clearly had never seen before. The guidelines she read were only recommendations and they only applied when conditions permitted. For example, students were to have 9 feet between them, except when this wasn’t possible. Then they could be as close as 3 feet from each other, which is only half of the standard 6 feet, which is, itself, insufficient to protect against aerosolized particles. Windows were to be opened, except in the numerous rooms that lack windows. Schools could choose to do temperature checks, or trust parents to do it at home. If someone passed the health screening at the beginning of the day, and got sick later, they’d be sent home (but apparently, all those who were in contact with that individual would remain).

It was absolutely appalling to witness SFUSD and the health dept being so ill-prepared on a recorded public forum with thousands of live viewers, but even more so when you consider the stakes. It gave me absolutely no confidence that either institution could be trusted to protect the health and safety of my child, or his teachers and school staff. Many of the families participating asked questions like, “Would the district base its decision to reopen on the recommendations of the CDC?” But if the CDC is weakening its recommendations to appease Trump and Wall Street, then they’re not going to keep our children and their teachers safe either.

The only safe and rational option is to:

·       Keep schools closed to live, in-person instruction until the pandemic is over

·       Provide sufficient teacher training, time and extra pay to develop higher quality remote learning experiences

·       Provide parents training and resources to help them support their children in their remote lessons and with their mental health and social development

·       Keep ALL workers home who are not truly essential for our day to day survival (e.g., workers who help produce food, utility services, emergency services and healthcare), or who cannot be provided a safe, uncrowded, well-ventilated work environment with adequate PPE

·       Provide everyone with the money and resources necessary to survive, including protection from evictions and foreclosures and utilities shut-offs

·       Provide safe childcare options to parents who are essential workers, including support for their children’s remote learning experiences

Careful Which Health Experts You Follow—Many are Charlatans

America has a long history of misology (hatred of knowledge). Our anti-intellectual streak goes back to the colonial days, with the lynch mob murders of accused witches, and our forebears’ love of snake oil, and it continues to this day with climate-deniers, anti-vaxxers, and most of all with President Trump and his followers.

Perhaps at no time in our lives, though, as there been a greater urgency for reason, and evidence to support it. Yet quacks, fakes and posers are coming out of the woodwork to tell us that it’s safe to go back to school and work, that Covid-19 is just a “bad flu,” that maybe we can just inject bleach or irradiate ourselves to overcome this plague.

So How Do We Distinguish Real Experts From Fakes?

Sophisticated thinkers know to examine the credentials of so-called experts to determine whether they have standing or credibility on the subject. Obviously, if both a pharmacist and a basketball star are discussing the safety and effectiveness of a prescription medicine, the pharmacist has more  expertise on the subject. But we need more than credentials to really trust an expert. Scientists and doctors are humans. They are subject to the same biases, fears, and political, economic and religious influences that affect the rest of us. Consider the scientists who’ve shilled for Big Tobacco.

I have an acquaintance with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who has done years of biomedical research, who told me that “the stats” indicate Covid-19 is like a “new flu,” not a “virus of unparalleled danger.” Clearly, this is someone who should know better. The absurdity of his statement is obvious when one considers that in a bad flu season (Oct-April), 60,000 Americans die, but Covid-19 has already killed 80,000 Americans in just 3 months.

Is he stupid? No. Does he want his personal liberty restored? Yes. He told me as much.

What I think is happening is that he is cherry picking his evidence and experts to support his desires. This is known as the Fallacy of Incomplete Evidence, and it’s completely understandable, even sympathetic, at a time like this, as it gives one the perception of safety and security when surrounded by so much fear and uncertainty.

Much less sympathetic are all the charlatans and snake oil peddlers making it onto mainstream media, since they are potentially tricking millions of Americans into supporting or doing dangerous and stupid things.

Dr. David Katz is one of these quacks and he has found success on both right wing Fox and liberal Bill Maher’s Real Time show on HBO, precisely because his lies and distortions promote hope that the worst of our fears are unwarranted and that it is safe to return to our normal lives.

Katz sounds like he has valid credentials. The Bill Maher program starts by discussing his volunteer work at a front line Bronx Covid ward, and the fact he’s a Yale professor and physician. However, about 20% of the way into the broadcast, they flashed on the screen that he is founder and CEO of Diet ID Inc., which ought to draw everyone’s suspicions. When I looked deeper into who this Katz character was, I discovered that the overwhelming bulk of his professional career has been dedicated to nutrition and how lifestyle influences health, not the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Another red flag is that he promotes himself with 5 or more acronyms after his name. Nobody who is really good at what they do bothers to mention the lesser degrees and affiliations. At a certain point in one’s career, the high school diploma and bachelor’s degree gets dropped. More importantly, nobody who is really good at what they do has time for 5 fields of expertise.

This is an example of the False Authority Fallacy. David Katz is so desperate to get us to trust him that he tacks acronyms and degrees onto his name like medals on a general's breast. But he is NOT an authority on infectious diseases, nor pandemics.

But let’s look at the meat of what he has to say, since one doesn’t have to be an expert to have something valid to say.

Like Trump, Boris Johnson and many Wall Street leaders, he has suggested that the “cure is worse than the disease.”

Worse for whom?

The “Cure” of sheltering in place is bad for profits, but it will also save thousands, possibly millions of lives. How could staying home from work and surviving be worse than going to work and dying?

He argues that flattening the curve doesn’t reduce the number of deaths; it only delays when people die. This is a Straw Man Fallacy (defeating an argument that was never made; vanquishing a false enemy). The primary goal of flattening the curve is to reduce the burden on hospitals and the medical system so they aren’t overloaded and can continue treat patients, not to prevent deaths. So, to claim it doesn’t reduce deaths is blaming it for something it was never intended to do, at least not as its primary objective.

However, flattening the curve does save lives indirectly, because when the medical system is overloaded, people die from neglect and abandonment, as happened in NY, Italy, Spain, even Detroit, where patients were triaged and allowed to die because there weren’t enough hospital beds and ventilators. So, flattening the curve does save some lives, even if that isn’t the main goal.

He says that flattening the curve doesn’t allow people to gain immunity, but there’s no indication that people gain any lasting, robust immunity to this disease. It may turn out they do, but so far, the data does not show this to be the case. Low level, short-term immunity might be enough to slow down the pandemic, or it might not. We won’t know for a long time, probably years. Therefore, letting the disease run rampant could result in millions of deaths. That’s just plain cruel and, for young people like Dr. Katz, selfish, too, since he’s less likely to die from it. But it’s also stupid and short-sighted, because if millions of people get sick, even healthy young people with mild cases will still suffer from mass shortages and possibly famine.

Bill Maher, his interviewer, says that Sweden, which did not implement strong social distancing policies, had numbers that weren’t much different from countries that locked down, but this is not true. If you look at the data from Worldometer (as of 5/8/2020) Sweden had 314 deaths/million people and 2500 infections/million people, more than triple the mortality of Denmark, and nearly 8x the mortality of Norway. (Denmark had 90 deaths/million people and 1764 infections/million people. Norway had 40 deaths/million people and 1489 infections/million people. And Finland had 47 deaths/million people and 1036 infections/million people. Clearly, Sweden is being hit much harder than its neighbors who implemented social distancing policies.

In his attempt to get us all to relax and learn to love Covid-19, Katz says “There are risks we willing take on each day.” This is another fallacy. Sure, we take risks getting into car or planes, but it’s our own choice, not one forced upon us by the president, our employer, or our desperation to put food on the table. We could choose to take public transit, instead, which is much safer than driving ourselves, or choose not to vacation by plane. Also, a good driver has a lot more control over their own safety than they do in the workplace, where so much of their safety depends on the boss’ willingness to provide safety equipment, and on coworkers respecting safety and social distancing protocols.

Katz argues that people should be allowed back to work because “We don’t want to destroy people’s lives and livelihoods.”

Of course not, but it is not an either/or choice. We should be looking first at people’s survival needs. Contrary to common belief, work and income are not necessary for survival. Food, housing, and medicine are. These 3 necessities can be given to people, even in a system that lacks money or “work.” People’s jobs, businesses, lifestyles, can be rebuilt after the pandemic is over. Dead people cannot be brought back to life. More importantly, though, if too many people get sick or die, everyone’s survival is threatened anyway. This is why suppression of the pandemic is necessary.

Katz suggests that we should all want to get the disease and get over it so we’re immune and can go out, live our lives, without worry, but there is no evidence that people who’ve recovered from Covid-19 have robust, lasting immunity that protects them from catching it again. Worse, there IS evidence that the newer mutant strain that evolved in Europe and has become the dominant strain worldwide, is both more infectious AND makes people prone to 2^nd infections.

His “middle road” hypothesis of only protecting the most vulnerable, and forcing the rest of us back to school and work, is based on the premise that both extremes are wrong (i.e., letting the pandemic run its course, unmitigated, versus a complete lockdown). This notion is NOT supported by scientific data, which shows that 20% of hospitalizations in the U.S. are among people aged 20-44,  and that people from any age group can die. It is premised on the cynical and selfish idea that it’s okay to sacrifice people other than himself, since he presumably wouldn’t die due his youthfulness and good health.

The “middle road” hypothesis is based on another fallacy, that extremism is inherently bad and that moderation is inherently preferable. This is the same argument that gets millions of Americans to vote for the “lesser evil” every four years, instead of for what they really want.

So, are the extremes in this case inherently bad?

Well, locking things down has resulted 30 million unemployed Americans, and mass hunger, despair, fear and uncertainty. The quality of education online is most likely worse than if kids were able to learn in person. But the other extreme of sending them back into schools and workplaces while the pandemic is still running rampant, without PPE, mass testing, contact tracing and quarantines, is genocidal. It will cause infections and mortality rates to skyrocket. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions will die.

Is Katz’ “middle road” the best alternative? NO! 

First, what does he even mean by protecting the most vulnerable? Will everyone over 70, or with an underlying health condition be allowed to continue sheltering in place? If so, that’s a lot of people. Obesity is a risk factor for dying from Covid-19. There are 70 million obese Americans, nearly a quarter of the population. There are 34 million Americans with diabetes and nearly half of all Americans have heart disease. If all of them continue to shelter in place, how much more productive would the economy become?

Katz argues that the middle way minimizes deaths and averts economic ruin. But it doesn’t. Any return to work without first having significant declines in infections, and ongoing testing, contact tracing, quarantines, risks causing new surges in infections and deaths, and potentially far worse economic outcomes than we’ve seen so far. We could easily get to a point where the economy collapses purely from too many people being sick to work and shop.

Extremism is not inherently a bad thing. We are in the worst crisis the world has experience in generations. When all is said and done, this pandemic could turn out to be far deadlier, and far more economically devastating than the Spanish flu. Under such conditions, extremism is exactly what’s needed. It’s the only possible way to slow this thing down and possibly stop it.  Furthermore, if we did ramp up testing to weekly universal tests, combined with contact tracing and quarantines, we could theoretically isolate the vast majority of infections and stop the pandemic that way, or at least slow it down long enough to allow us back to work and give scientists the time to find a vaccine to prevent future outbreaks.