Why is a intelligent, qualified, experienced team of epidemiologists "only in a position to identify the (medical) benefits of the lockdown and not the costs."
After all, you were able to recognise both parameters?
After all, you were able to recognise both parameters?
Not to mention the fact the core competency of an epidemiologist is statistical analysis and predicting human behaviour with mathematical models at a high level of abstraction, so it's not like the interdisciplinary understanding is a stretch for them
Public policy wrt Covid basically occurs at the intersection of epidemiology and economics. The epidemiologists can help tell you what will happen under different scenarios, and the economists can tell you what will happen economically speaking in those same scenarios.
We're basically balancing the economic impact directly attributable to sick days and to COVID-19 deaths, with the impact of the shutdown itself.
As you already know, my conclusion is that the latter is far more severe. But that balancing act is of course precisely what all the debate is about.
There's no hole in my view because I believe that experts are right more often than not, but I also believe that they can get things wrong, or fail to see the ramifications of certain policies.
Thus why so much of the discussion seems to be optimizing for a single variable - COVID-19 deaths - while ignoring plenty of other dimensions that we care about (deaths from all causes in the long run, quality of life, etc).
In particular quality of life is absolutely missing from the analysis in many who claim that the lockdown is justified.
OTOH, someone well versed in economy but not in epidemiology or medicine would fail to understand some of the health implications of the current epidemic.
It's not a problem per se, but that's where the discussion on public policy comes in, weighing all the opinions from the stakeholders, then making a decision (right or wrong, but taking responsiblity for it).
That's why I'm wary of statements like "we will reopen when the scientists say so": it's a deflection of responsibility (they don't carry the burden, rightly so, for their decision, but politics does), and for the politics, a serious step back from its duties.