Coming home to roost

We currently find ourselves in the middle of the most serious world crisis in generations. I have one bit of advice for anyone who's overwhelmed: Turn off cable TV news.

You don't need to watch CNN. The best journalism on coronavirus I've seen comes from “ars TECHNICA” that you may access here: bit.ly/2U3ugNF. You have to go straight to scientific journals to find better. This information here is thoroughly cited and updated daily. It's the best single coronavirus news aggregator I've found.

The coronavirus pandemic is an incredibly serious problem. But a big question is if the cure we are pursuing is worse than the cause. I think that we need to make darned sure that we are considering all of our options carefully enough. That's what I'd like to take a look at.

A few caveats.

If you've already set in your ways about how we should address this pandemic, you might as well move along. If you are one of those who shame anyone that questions things like the mortality rate from coronavirus or the collateral damage from locking the economy down, you are just going to get yourself worked up.

I actually had one friend in this camp who asked me when I became “anti-science.” Another told me that this is “no time for error bars.” I beg to differ. Sticking up for science over speculation and panic is precisely what I'm doing. And when there's no time for error bars you might as well just consult a crystal ball for what to do next.

If you are one of those who thinks that this pandemic is all some sort of grand conspiracy by the media and deep state, you need to run, not walk, away. I'm going to whack you so hard with science that your next tattoo will have error bars.

If you are one of those people I see in the grocery store parking lot stuffing 150 rolls of toilet paper in the trunk of a car, you're not up for this either. And if our paths have crossed, please forget that you know me.

One of the things that the media consistently gets wrong about the coronavirus pandemic is their conflation of reliable information with academic or professional credentials. That's not always so. There's an easy way to tell, by the way, who's got the goods when it comes to the numbers and that's to examine their methodology in producing them.

There is no such thing as absolute certainty in measurement. Sometimes those uncertainties are small; sometimes they are large. Scientists state those uncertainties along with their measurements. Scientific graphs don't generally look like the graphs you see in the media because they show trends along with information concerning the uncertainty in the data used to produce that trend. There's also axial data that helps interpret the the trend being shown.

Without any of this, you are looking at an anecdote, not a scientific graph. It might be good, it might not.

Another thing that's lost on the media is how science, itself, actually works. Science is much more than just people with degrees and lab coats offering up observations. A very important part of the scientific method is peer-review — the process by which scientific peers have the opportunity to critique studies based on methodology, data, conclusions or anything else.

This vetting process is crucial. Much of what is informing the public discussion on coronavirus has not yet been peer-reviewed. It doesn't mean that the information is wrong, or that those putting it out there have some impure motive. It just means that the process is incomplete. In this circumstance, especially with what's at stake here, some skepticism is warranted.

Look — I get it. If you are standing on train tracks and hear a train approaching at high speed, your first impulse is to get out of the way rather than ponder the impulse-momentum relationship.

But everyone needs to realize that right now no one knows with absolute certainty how the medical/economic (and yes, the two are intertwined) crisis we find ourselves in is going to play out. As we continue to accumulate data, we'll get a better feel for what's going on — but we're not there yet.

The journalists, hosts and non-scientific guests on TV generally have little to no idea about any of this — even though the technical part of it is based on high school level science. It's inexcusable for anyone to look you in the eye and encourage you to act drastically based on something they, themselves, don't fully understand. What is going on now in much of the major media has passed irresponsible and moved well into the realm of journalistic malpractice.

This is an example of an unfortunate trend coming home to roost. For many years, the community of math and science educators has pushed for more more exposure to STEM in general education. Instead we got less. And what we did get were courses that were so watered down as to be somewhat less than useful. That's how it's possible to get a college degree from a prestigious institution without knowing the first thing about how to interpret a simple two-axis graph.

There's nothing particularly wrong with this either — as long as you know what you don't know. But it's completely evident that many figures in the media don't have a clue about the data that informs their reporting.

Many of the actual experts I see interviewed on TV are saying all of the right things. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has become the point person for our coronavirus response, is an excellent representative for both science and reason. Dr. Fauci speaks in carefully measured tones that exude knowledge, experience and appropriate levels of concern. I trust him, and I think that you can, too.

But there's still a problem. Dr. Fauci is an immunologist. He's probably one of the best people around to be directing our medical response to the coronavirus pandemic. I expect him to advocate for the best medical solutions to the crisis, and he's doing just that.

This, however, is more than a medical problem — it's an economic one as well. And there's less evidence than I'd like that we are giving adequate thought to the long-lasting effects of tanking the world economy to contain the pandemic. I personally wish that someone with Dr. Fauci's stature in the realm of economics had an equal role in the discussion of what we should be doing.

There is one figure with some gravitas who's doing just that — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. I've been really impressed by the way Gov. Cuomo handles himself when those interviewing him are trying to get him to push the panic button. Gov. Cuomo is measured in his responses and has indicated that he understands that this is both a medical and economic predicament. Kudos to him.

The one thing that is known with a fairly high degree of certainty is that the coronavirus is highly contagious. I've seen estimates based on good data that predict that more than 80 percent of us will eventually become infected. What is less well-known is how many of those infected will be asymptomatic, develop a mild case of COVID-19, become seriously ill or die.

Right now, the best estimate for the mortality rate of COVID-19 appears to be around 0.6 percent — a number that has been declining as testing becomes more widespread. Common flu, which has lots of statistical data to draw upon, has a mortality around 0.1 percent. The uncertainty in the former is much greater than the latter, but let's assume for the time being that these are reasonably accurate numbers.

Social distancing will surely slow down the spread of the virus. A physicist friend of mine, Wolfgang Bauer, has created a wonderful simulation that allows anyone to play with some basic parameters to see how social distancing works. You may try the simulation for yourself here: bit.ly/2wcYFjK. The great thing about this model is that you can adjust the input parameters to see how wide of a range of outcomes exist.

So social distancing works. But what if, given the extremely contagious nature of this coronavirus, it makes a comeback after our initial round of social distancing? I'm reluctant to compare this coronavirus pandemic to the Spanish flu pandemic of 102 years ago because the two have some important distinctions, but one element of the earlier pandemic that is germane now is that it came in waves that got worse with time.

What if after 18 months of lock downs, which some are predicting, we still have not beat the coronavirus back? We will certainly have bought ourselves enough time to allow our current medical capacity to treat sick people, but at what cost to the economy?

I think that you have to look at the costs of this pandemic in terms of overall social misery — with the goal of minimizing it. Everyone will have a different idea on how to weigh social misery but for the sake of discussion let's say that on a scale of 1 to 10, death is a 10, death of a loved one is a 9, loss of livelihood is a 7, being inconvenienced by lack of toilet paper is a 1.

When you compare the number of people who are going to be economically devastated (some current estimates are as high as 20 percent unemployment in the U.S. alone) by extreme social distancing with the number of people likely to die or experience the death of a loved one, you can make an argument that you are doing more to lessen overall social misery by mitigating the damage to the economy — as you are simultaneously ramping up the ability to treat the large numbers of people who are going to get sick at the same time.

I don't think this is far-fetched or unreasonable to discuss. In China, they build hospitals in six days. We can do that here as well. Ventilators are not that complex to build. Neither are the surgical masks and other hospital supplies that are now in high demand.

In this country, we have a mostly for-profit medical care system. In such a system, excess capacity is not profitable. This is an emergency; nationalize any part of the medical industry you need to if you have to.

So what if we end up with some excessive capacity? It's not like there is a shortage of pandemic threats in the modern world to be faced down the road.

There's also a strong chance that putting money into creating more capacity to treat the sick has a better social misery outcome than throwing a trillion dollars at economic Band-Aids necessitated by extreme social distancing.

Another component to social distancing that is problematic is how it directly taxes the health care system.

Right now, most schools are closing and some are advocating that daycare facilities close next. Both of these actions have the potential to deleteriously affect the health care system — potentially on a large scale.

When you close a daycare or an elementary school, you remove from the health care system people who then have to stay home and take care of their children. Not just doctors and pharmacists and other relatively well-off professionals who may have the resources to come up with other options, but nurses, aids, maintenance workers, cafeteria workers and everyone else required to keep a hospital running.

I've yet to hear a good answer on how we're going to deal with that should the most extreme social distancing come to pass.

My point in all of this is that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to discuss our response to this pandemic. Having questions about what we are doing is far from anti-science, anti-social or irresponsible.

In my view, it's absolutely necessary.

One final thing. When all of this is done, we really need to have a serious discussion about China.

Thanks hearing me out. Good luck, everyone. I hope that you are able to fare well in these difficult times.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, consultant and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time happily raising three children, llama farming and riding mountain bikes and motorcycles.