Following the Science—Where?

Medical evidence is not always clear, and it rarely mandates a clear policy direction.

Joel Zinberg July 24, 2020

When doctors meet a patient for a new complaint, we make a list of different possible explanations for the problem—a differential diagnosis—and try to determine the correct diagnosis, while starting treatment for the most likely one. After this initial assessment, as test and imaging results come in, we may alter the differential diagnosis and treatments.

Public-health officials dealing with a new pathogen, like the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, go through a similar process. They must recommend policies with incomplete information and adjust them over time. But unlike physicians, they do so in public, and sometimes under intense scrutiny.

Dr. Anthony Fauci—and this is not meant as criticism—has epitomized the public-health diagnostic process with multiple, incorrect, early pronouncements: In January and February, he downplayed the risk of person-to-person spread; he expressed doubt that asymptomatic people could transmit the virus; in late February, he reassured the public that, “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis”; and in March, like many other public-health officials here and abroad, he said that, outside of health-care personnel, ordinary people should not wear masks. In fact, both Fauci and Surgeon General Jerome Adams suggested that mask-wearing could increase a person’s risk of being infected. All these assertions proved wrong........To Read More.....