Public Orders: Summary

Keeping sound minds while paring back freedoms

Our governments tell us to shelter in place, stop working, avoid going outside, end all travel, and stay away from doctors and hospitals unless deathly ill.

Are these pandemic edicts based purely on facts and evidence, or are they largely influenced by social and political considerations?

We should be urged to do these things because of the basic physics of the coronavirus’ structure and the way in which contaminated droplets spread the pathogen. It is our interactions with each other that determine the speed and reach of the pandemic and the most foolproof way to stop the spread is to physically prevent transmission.

Actual public policies have not always paid heed to such realities, for example those regarding face masks, residential lockdowns, and the use of mathematical pandemic models.

A first-pass suggestion is to test every health order against a straightforward and deliberately limited public health criterion: does the policy reduce the possibility of contagion by maintaining physical distancing? A dozen examples in the article apply this criterion.

Of course, the gigantic hidden question in all of this is whether social distancing is a policy that actually makes good sense. That remains an open issue and is only likely to become more controversial as time goes on.

The full article is found here.