Thread by @soncharm

This is one of the (many) problems with CDC’s ‘guidelines’. They make up all these thresholds out of their butts (to throw in some color-coded table) and then *link guidance to them*.

That isn’t a scientific exercise. It’s not science. I don’t even know what it is

https://twitter.com/vprasadmdmph/status/1420827117437132802

Defenders will say ‘well, they had to draw the line somewhere?’ No, they really didn’t. *Policymakers* have to draw the line somewhere; people in *executive roles* where they are (theoretically) accountable to the community & must balance competing concerns.

The narrow version of CDC ‘having to draw the line somewhere’ is if they want to characterize these risk factors as lo/medium/high, green/yellow/red or whatever. Hey, be my guest

But stop turning them into mechanical triggers for suggested actions

A sane/sensible setup might have the CDC saying ‘if your new case tally is 50 per 100k you’re in the Yellow Zone on that metric’

The local officials could be like:

Ok

Thanks, good to know

and then decide whatever for their community, taking into account *other stuff*

Instead what we get is CDC giving out the info/risk buckets, *and* de facto instructing policymakers what to do about it. This is a messed-up setup and a conflation of what their proper role should be

But it’s even worse than that cuz we’re now bifurcated into areas that treat CDC ‘guidance’ as holy writ & those that wish to deviate from it. The latter de facto have to become outright ‘CDC rebels’ in order to do so with some defensible narrative. This isn’t ideal (for either)

So I humbly suggest. For the Nth time. That the geniuses at CDC stay in their lane, which is that they’re subject-matter experts who were not elected to either legislative or executive positions. They are civil employees whose role is support, giving information. Act like it

Because no, ‘you should require masks indoors if your trailing-7d new-case count exceeds 50/100k’ is not ‘information’. It’s not ‘science’. It doesn’t follow from any data or discoveries or knowledge. It’s a (made-up, arbitrary) policy prescription. Let policymakers make policy.

And yes, policymakers deserve scorn too. At least the ones saying ‘follow the science’. Cuz there’s no science here! ‘You should require masks if…’ isn’t science! In going w/that recommendation you didn’t ‘follow science’ you followed some rando bureaucrat’s *value judgment*.