Assuming it hasn’t yet been removed from the New York Times website and replaced with an editor’s apology, everyone in America should read the op-ed that ran Sunday by former emergency room doctor Elisabeth Rosenthal.
It’s not that Rosenthal said anything shocking in itself, but that the Times allowed her to say it there at all. Until now, the only acceptable line on the Times opinion page regarding coronavirus has been to advocate for indefinite economic lockdown and constant panic until all 320 million people in the United States have been tested and the disease eradicated.
Rosenthal did the opposite. “For the foreseeable future we will be living in a world with some level of coronavirus out there,” she wrote. “So if we want to get out of our bunkers, we all need to take stock of our risk tolerance.”
That’s the first time the paper has allowed anyone to say anything outside of, “If we can’t prevent the spread of COVID-19, the economy will not be able to reopen.” (Yes, that was said in the Times by two Yale University scientists on April 26.)
“Accepting risk doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind,” Rosenthal continued. “It means taking all precautions and deciding you can live with the very reduced risk that remains.”
Wait, you mean to say that I, a young and healthy person with no underlying conditions, don’t have to live in crippling fear so long as I wash my hands, wear a mask when necessary, and avoid close, sustained contact with high-risk individuals? Who knew?
Let’s read more!
“A vaccine, when and if it arrives, will be a big help,” wrote Rosenthal. “But in the meantime, we have science. We know what causes Covid-19. We are learning more about how to detect, prevent and treat it every day. So instead of taking your temperature and checking your pulse oximeter reading twice a day, it may be time to take stock of your risk tolerance.”
This is something we should have accepted months ago. True, at the start of the pandemic it was our only option to ask that everyone shutter themselves inside so that health experts and public officials had a few moments to assess a new freak virus that has confounded scientists across the globe. It was also necessary so as not to overwhelm our hospitals.
But it was absolutely absurd to mandate that everyone sequester themselves for an unlimited period of time, blowing a hole in the economy, all while knowing that the vast majority of those who get infected will either suffer no symptoms or recover without no help needed.
Maybe now that the Times let someone say it, the rest of the media will admit it’s true.
