Our disagreements on COVID are now rarely about science; they're differences in values. As such, it's important for scientific experts to recognize that we are not moral experts. Our opinions of what costs and tradeoffs are justified are not more valid than anyone else's. 🧵
People differ in the amount of risk we're willing to accept as part of living. Not because some are paranoid or others are reckless (labels for those we disagree with), but because we have different value systems around risk, and most of all, who gets to make those choices.
Scientists' job is to give people accurate information about what the facts are, because that's where we actually do have expertise. But it gets awfully murky beyond that.
This is why I argue for mitigations to become optional once the danger is no longer extreme: I think scientists should be loath to make detailed value choices for others when there is more than one reasonable perspective.
With masks as one example, when the WHO and CDC, England and Scotland, Massachusetts and California, or San Francisco and San Mateo have different rules, it shows how complex the trade-offs really are. There is no one answer to what's "best" bc it's not a scientific question.
If we acknowledge that, I think we can hear each other a lot more and respect that places making different decisions aren't stupid: they're entirely rational from a different set of starting principles.
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