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Surging COVID-19 Debate

November 17, 2020
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Surging COVID-19 Debate

Be it resolved, the public health response to COVID-19 should focus on protecting the old and letting the young get on with living normal lives.

We’re heading into the twelfth month of a global pandemic and in many places the spread of COVID-19 shows no signs of slowing down. As infections continue to surge, countries in the northern hemisphere have started to reimpose lockdowns restricting people’s movement and social interactions and closing portions of their economies. Many political leaders and their public health advisors argue that these kinds of restrictions are necessary as a crisis measure when infections spiral out of control, threatening a collapse of hospitals and devastating health consequences. They also advocate a strategy of suppression to keep infections low once the crisis is brought under control. But some politicians and public health experts are criticizing what they believe is an overly draconian approach. They say that it makes no sense to prevent the healthy and young from going about their normal lives when their risk of dying from the virus is less than the flu and they suffer considerable collateral damage from lockdowns. They argue that countries should adopt a focused approach to fighting the pandemic that zeroes in on protecting elderly and vulnerable.

“With COVID-19 there’s a thousand-fold difference in mortality between the oldest and the youngest. That’s something we have to utilize as we fight this enemy.”

– Martin Kulldorff 

“To send out many millions of young people who’ve made such sacrifices to keep the pandemic under control and expose them to a disease where we don’t know the consequences is absolutely unethical, quite apart from ineffective.”

– Stephen Reicher

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