https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/495833-how-to-open-society-using-medical-science-and-logic?rnd=1588469307
As of the first week of May, more than 66,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that three to four weeks typically elapse before death, thousands more who are already infected will also succumb to the virus. That said, the direct toll from the infection has markedly declined throughout the United States, including the epicenter of New York. The curves have been flattened – the stated goal of the isolation has been accomplished – for both hospitalizations per day and deaths per day.
We now have an even greater urgency, due to the severe and single-minded policies already implemented. Treating COVID-19 “at all costs” is severely restricting other medical care and instilling fear in the public, creating a massive health disaster, separate from a potential world poverty crisis with almost incalculable consequences. Half of neurosurgery patients still refuse to come in for treatment of diseases that if left untreated risk brain hemorrhage, paralysis and death, even when their doctors directly reassure them. That’s just one subset of the latest reports of skipping two-thirds to three-fourths of cancer screenings, most childhood vaccinations and treatment for new strokes and known cancer.
There are two critical aspects of this urgently needed re-entry plan. First, policymakers must apply logic and critical thinking to the massive amount of evidence we have acquired and combine that with decades of established medical science. Second, we must demonstrate and fully convey the logic underlying the plan to reassure a public that has become almost paralyzed with panic and fear.