Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures
It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown.<p>Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation.<p>As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how many lives we put to risk vs how much economic turmoil we can tolerate.<p>With so little data on the latter (economic crashes absolutely can lead to deaths as well), it feels like we aren’t equipped to make educated policy decisions on how far we should go to limit the spread.<p>I hope after all this we can create a more cohesive playbook for navigating these tradeoffs in the future. Many of these public health orders feel like knee jerk reactions lacking evidence.<p>Better to err on the side of caution I suppose.