Thinking about Governor McKee’s (let’s just say) uninspiring leadership on COVID in preparation for my weekly conversation with John DePetro, I wondered why we can’t just follow the obvious path of sanity.

Never in my life have I heard so many people talking about believing science and engaging with concepts of risk and mitigation, but it’s all become meaningless because there is no talk of tradeoffs.  There’s no discussion about acceptable risk.

If public health authorities wanted, they really could offer the public a clear presentation of the actual risks to people of different ages or in different circumstances.  They could then illustrate the practical (and realistic) benefit of each form of mitigation.

We could then figure out where we should focus as a community and what we can or are willing to do as individuals.  But the conversation pulls up short of that sort of consideration, perhaps because the panicked people and those looking to make ideological gains know they couldn’t dominate that discussion.