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>"How long should we quarantine to minimize health impact, and maximize economic recovery?" You're not asking a scientific question, you're asking a political
by zaarn 6y ago
>"How long should we quarantine to minimize health impact, and maximize economic recovery?"
You're not asking a scientific question, you're asking a political one, because you also want the economy to do well, which is political.
There are two conflicting questions there, in reality; "How long can we quarantine without affecting the economy?" (Answer is like 0 days)
And "How long must we quarantine to eradicate the virus?" (Answer is around 140 days if a single quarantine unit contains up to 10 people and they infect eachother on the last day of symptom-freeness).
Because the question is not only political but considers two conflicting requirements, you can either satisfy both in a bad way or satisfy one well and abandon the other.
A similar situation occurs when you are tasked with optimizing the material usage for a product. Science can tell you how little product material you need so that it performs to spec and it can tell you how much you need so that it'll perform it's function as long as possible. The balance informs the price of the product but politically capitalism wants you to prefer a low price, similar to how capitalism will prefer no quarantine and lockdown.
- ghaff 6y agoApparently on HN, you're not allowed to admit there are tradeoffs in the current situation especially to do things that some consider to be unnecessary.
- zaarn 6y agoYou can have tradeoffs but then you're no longer answering scientific questions but either a political question or a question of personal belief (ie, "which you think is better").
- ghaff 6y agoOf course. Science can help you e.g. estimate risk. But balancing that risk against other factors has to be a political and/or personal tradeoff. There's no way it could be otherwise. Science, even if it could provide perfect information, doesn't have the tools to make policy decisions. Whether schools should be wide-open, hybrid, or remote only is not a scientific decision although, of course, whatever scientific data is known or thought to be known should of course factor into any decision.
- zaarn 6y agoThat is exactly the point but also somewhat auxiliary; when people say things like "science can't answer these questions" the issue is either that the question is already politically loaded or requires a tradeoff between two opposing goals, where this balance is policy not science. Science can't solve all our problems but at the same time, it doesn't mean we should discount science when trying to solve them. When I ask people to listen to science, that doesn't mean "have science solve the problem entirely" but "all viable solution maxima are scientifically solvable, the tradeoff is ethical". If someone suggests a solution that is not scientifically solvable, then it ought to be disregarded or considered for what is it is; pure politics, something you have to think about morally and ethically.