Thread by @JeremyKonyndyk

To expand on this:

What the administration is doing here is politics, not science.

And what these academics are doing is likewise politics, not science.

https://twitter.com/davidalim/status/1313618484211965952

The three academics lay out their case here. It's pretty brief and easy to read.

Interestingly, it does not cite or reference a single piece of research to support their arguments, nor does the linked website containing their sign-on "declaration." unherd.com/2020/10/covid-…

The basic argument:
- COVID poses little risk of death beyond specific vulnerable groups
- Non-vulnerables face little risk so should just go ahead and get the disease
- Vulnerables should be sheltered while non-vulnerables get naturally infected
- Ta-da, natural herd immunity

Also implicit to their argument: that the only policy options available are debilitating lockdowns or natural herd immunity.

The reason their declaration cites no actual evidence may be that the actual evidence contradicts each of these arguments.

Let's take them in turn:

First, even for those COVID doesn't kill, it's hardly harmless.

We are learning much more about the enduring damage of a COVID infection for many "long-haulers." jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

Letting COVID rip through the population unchecked would vastly higher numbers of people at risk of prolonged serious health effects, even if they don't die. statnews.com/2020/10/07/cov…

Second, a protect-the-vulnerable strategy presumes a) we can confidently ID who is high risk, and b) that's a small enough share of the population that they can be realistically sheltered from the rest.

Nope. Here's the CDC rundown of people who could be at elevated risk:

This is a large share of the US population, as high as 47%. And predicting who among them will develop a severe case is notoriously difficult. cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspecti…

So shielding the vulnerable would still require sequestering huge numbers of people across all ages - not just the elderly.

Third, shielding the vulnerable presumes that shielding works.

Most evidence suggests that it doesn't.

What we've consistently seen with the recent waves of outbreaks has been that transmission that starts among the young will shift to older cohorts.

cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/6…

In other words, you can't build a peeing section in a swimming pool.

Fourth, for natural herd immunity to be possible, recovering from infection must convey enduring immunity. There's may be the case here; reinfection so far seems rare. But we don't know how long it lasts since this virus is <1 year old.

So basically this argument on shielding those vulnerable to severe COVID outcomes...ignores the actual evidence on COVID severity, vulnerability characteristics, and the feasibility of shielding.

But there's more.

The essence of the argument is a false dichotomy between indefinite lockdown or unimpeded community spread.

Not coincidentally, this is the same dichotomy that Trump (in less academic parlance) has been parroting since the spring.

https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1313760847932596224?s=20

To believe that those are the only options on the table, you have to ignore the evidence from the MANY countries that have managed to suppress transmission without debilitating long-term closures.

https://twitter.com/dylanhmorris/status/1313549210655043585?s=20

Which raises the natural question: if there are options out there that can achieve disease suppression *without* wide protracted societal closure...why wouldn't these academics bother to address that?

Perhaps because it demolishes the premise of their argument?

The various flavors of the natural herd immunity argument boil down to this: yes, it's a risk, but the damage of protracted closure is greater, so that risk should be accepted.

But that's only true if those are the only options on the table. They're clearly not.

The Trump administration's motive for consulting these folks is fully about giving an imprimatur of expertise to a narrative that excuses their own inept management of the pandemic.

As to why these academics would willingly play along...I have no idea.