Testifying at a Senate hearing on the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday afternoon, conservative economist Avik Roy deployed one of President Trump’s favorite metaphors for discussing the outbreak, which has killed more than 71,000 Americans.
“Thirty-seven thousand Americans die each year in traffic fatalities, and yet we don’t shut down the roads,” said Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. He called vehicular accidents “a good mental framework for how to live with COVID-19,” referring to the lower respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
That is, there were, in his view, ways to save lives that didn’t require dramatic, society-wide measures. “We expect individual drivers to be responsible for their own conduct and the conduct of passengers. Something similar can work for COVID-19,” he said, describing how businesses could do regular deep-cleanings and people could continue to wash their hands thoroughly and regularly.
Trump ally Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., convened the hearing, titled “COVID-19: How New Information Should Drive Policy.” Billed as a roundtable of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which Johnson chairs, the hearing included some of the nation’s most prominent dissenters on mainstream measures like business closures, stay-at-home orders and calls for widespread testing.
Participants in Tuesday’s hearing included Dr. David L. Katz, a high-profile epidemiologist who in March published a widely debated New York Times op-ed provocatively titled “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?”
Speaking a month-and-a-half later from his home office, Dr. Katz, who founded the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, was ready to answer the question in the affirmative. He called lockdown measures “draconian” and said that the “unintended consequences of our interdiction efforts” were potentially more dangerous than the disease they were supposed to stop. Some of those consequences, he said, included poverty and unemployment, as well as fear of seeking non-coronavirus-related medical care. He cited an increase in domestic violence incidents and deteriorating mental health.
“Those are real families,” Katz said. “Those are real people.”
Considering the mortality statistics from last several months, Katz argued that a more nuanced approach was necessary. “This is a different disease for different populations,” he said. He called for the elderly and already ill to continue staying at home, while arguing that younger, healthier people should resume ordinary lives without much worry. Trump has argued much the same thing, though without describing a national plan for reopening. He has largely left that task to the states, which has resulted in a confusing patchwork of public health directives.
All the witnesses present — digitally, that is — expressed skepticism of continuing lockdown measures, which many states are continuing. They also said it was unrealistic to test millions of Americans daily.
“Everything is about targeted protecting of at-risk people,” said Dr. Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institution, “and allowing people to get out who are not in those groups, particularly so that we can increase herd immunity.” He seemed to be alluding to the Swedish model of pandemic response, which is predicated on the notion that letting the disease spread will lead more quickly to people developing widespread immunity against it
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