Is ‘the cure’ worse than the problem?

No society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board writes. Resources to fight the virus aren’t limitless, the board says, and the costs of this national shutdown will soon cause “a tsunami of economic destruction” that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs.

We don’t have enough reliable data about the disease’s fatality rate to be making such drastic economic sacrifices, Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford epidemiology professor, argues at Stat. What would happen, he asks, if we simply let the disease run its course? Even in the most pessimistic scenario, the coronavirus would kill about 40 million people worldwide, roughly matching the 1918 flu pandemic. But afterward, he says, life would hopefully continue, as it did after the flu. Conversely, the short-term and long-term consequences of an economic shutdown are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives could be put at stake.

A better way to fight the pandemic is to isolate the most vulnerable, Dr. David L. Katz argues in The Times. He suggests the United States focus its resources on testing and protecting the elderly, people with chronic diseases and the immunologically compromised. By keeping a smaller portion of the population at home, he contends, most could return to life as usual and prevent the economy from collapsing.