The recent COVID-19 pandemic has set a worldwide panic. Almost every government, whether national, state, or local is implementing some version of a lockdown strategy where people are either ordered or advised to stay indoors until further notice. This has resulted in the closure of public transport in some countries (like India), closure of non-essential businesses (almost in every country), loss of jobs, loss of public wealth (stock market, depreciation of assets due to recession in economy), and widespread uncertainty as there is no definite timeline about how long this may continue. One of the main arguments to justify this lockdown strategy is that this is the ONLY effective way to avoid or minimize public transmission of this extremely virulent pathogen which has the capacity to infect a large number of people if protocols of social distancing are not followed. No doubt, this is a very compelling and persuasive argument on its face. But the problem is, it is devoid of any credible evidence and without any cost-benefit analysis. Before people jump their guns for me mentioning "cost-benefit" analysis, I am not talking about determining the cost of human life and evaluating it against economic benefit or loss, I am talking about the analysis between various alternatives to this strategy, let's be clear about this.
It is not a secret that 100% compliance with any rule or policy is impossible. No matter how good implementation is there is bound to be a violation. Also, locking down the entire country is practically an impossible task. The most important factor that does not seem to be taken into consideration in this equation is that COVID-19 seems to be more dangerous for a particular age group and people with certain condition conditions. Numbers are displayed like reporting scores of an NBA, NFL, or cricket match without providing any further details about what these numbers really signify. Are these infections among high-risk people? What is the percentage of people from high-risk groups among reported deaths? What's the recovery rate among high-risk and low-risk people? These are only some of the questions that could be easily answered due to our increased speed and capacity to collect and process the data. All the efforts should have been directed towards protecting high-risk groups. Identify them, isolate them, and provide them with all essentials so that they don't have to mix with other low-risk populations without following strict social distancing protocols. It's easier to manage and control the behavior of a small group of people than putting an entire country in lockdown and expecting that everyone will obey it. Actually, the lockdown is an extremely inefficient, wasteful, resource-intensive, and expensive way of achieving the same goal, that is, to protect the high-risk people from infection of this virus. Only and only if this infection was extremely dangerous for everyone irrespective of their age or medical history the lockdown strategy in the way it is currently implemented would have made sense.
I wonder why these questions are not being asked in decision-making meetings? Why people are not proposing a more targeted approach than a one-size-fits-all approach? Why people are not able to see the self-inflicted damage on the economy and personal lives of the poor and marginalized? Why the number of infected people is important? What's the problem even if 90% of the country is infected if the death rate is within acceptable limits comparable to other similar infections? Imagine a scenario where 90% of a country is infected but only 0.1% of them are from the high-risk group. Is this better or worse than a complete lockdown where only 10% population is infected, but 10% of them are from the high-risk group? Why these models are not proposed or debated? Another thing to keep in mind is that any of these predictions based on modeling can be completely wrong. I worked in the area of structure-based drug design long enough to know that many times models fail to predict outcomes of complex problems. They are helpful, but they don't provide definitive answers and this should be a factor when considering predictions from any model.
As far as the lawmakers, national leaders, and other decision-makers are concerned, it is a win-win situation for all of them. If things get worse, more people die, they will claim, imagine the devastation without these precautionary measures. If things get better, and fewer people die, they will claim that this was the result of their aggressive measures. They win praise no matter what happens. Also, in hindsight, anything can be justified or criticized, this is called hindsight bias. The actual test is are these leaders willing to take steps that justify the cost they are inflicting on society or going to play safe and do what everyone is doing without analyzing if that's the best solution for their country or not? The answer is for everyone to see.
This crisis will also pass for sure. I hope some of the questions which I posed above will be asked and we will be better equipped to deal with such pandemics in the future. I hope that worldwide panic will not be touted as a universal solution when we face another world crisis. I also wish to thank all who are at the forefront of fighting this war and are working tirelessly to deal with this situation.
Thanks for reading and please share your opinion about this topic.
