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The reasoning goes like this. We can’t afford to keep these draconian social distancing measures in place much longer because we’re destroying the economy. Then come some graphs: lines of sharp cliffs to show us that the stock market is in freefall, unemployment is skyrocketing, and we’re headed for a new Great Depression—an economic cataclysm. The cure, we’re told, might be worse than the disease. An outbreak of armchair epidemiology and economics is aiding and abetting the problem, amplified by a news media eager for a hot take.
The most egregious cases came in late March in the New York Times when diet-doctor David Katz and then Iraq War–monger Thomas Friedman both decided they had the “plan” to end the pandemic and get the United States back to work within weeks. (Katz’s byline identifies him as the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, implying to many an affiliation with Yale. He actually no longer directs the center, and has no academic appointment at the university.) Neither half-baked argument makes much sense given the realities of where we are now in the pandemic and basic principles of disease control. It sounds wonderful to be able to go back to normal life while protecting those at high risk. But how? It is as if the men writing these takes—and we have not seen one from a woman—really do imagine that we are a world of individuals, born naked on a rock as so many philosopher kings have imagined.
full: http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/gregg-gonsalves-amy-kapczynski-markets-v-lives
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