More on why the FT presentation of the data undermines the position I have taken — and why I still hold that position.

1. The successes from the FT presentation (China, S. Korea) clearly relied on a combination of testing and contact tracing to control the pandemic.

1/N

2. So there is no question in my mind that *if* contact tracing is possible, trace and isolate or trace, test, and isolate can succeed, even with this virus.

2/N

3. The open question is what policy can succeed if contact tracing is impossible, as seems to be the case in US.

For evidence that contact tracing is failing, see this tweet from June:

In NYC, only 37% of known positives offered even 1 contact.

3/N https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1276514793495638016

4. A reasonable person can either:

(i) keep trying to persuade more people in the US to cooperate; or

(ii) identify policies that can work even when contact tracing is impossible.

The debate between backers of (i) and (ii) must take place, even if it ruffles feathers.

4/N

5. In debate between exortation about contact tracing vs. other options, participants must agree that the answer depends on questions of fact, not moral assertions about right and wrong.

QN of fact 1: Is persuasion working?

QN of fact 2: Are there viable alternatives?

5/N

6. I wish it were not so, but the evidence seems clear that in the US and the UK now, persuasion by experts is not succeeding. If anything, it is back-firing.

The public is rebelling against “preachy” expert exhortation that they perceive to be ondescending.

6/N

7. Evidence that experts persuasion is failing:

- Backlash against economic experts in the Brexit vote.

- Growth of the anti-vax movement despite unified expert exhortation re value of vaccines.

- In this pandemic, masks as political statement.

7/N

8. Reasonable people can disagree about why experts lost their legitimacy and how we might recover.

But in the next 6 - 12 months, there is no reason to expect a dramatic change.

To save lives and livelihoods, It is a fact that the we experts must work around.

8/N

9. And as experts, we must consider the evidence that bears on two possibilities:

- More expert exhortation will not make contact tracing feasible in the US.

- More expert exhortation might further erode what little legitimacy the experts possess.

9/N

10. My claim has been that:

a) a policy of test and isolate, with zero contact tracing can reduce R;

b) it can be used with other policies that reduce R, such as wearing masks and restricting daily activities;

and c) …

10/N

and

c) holding some target value of R constant, more frequent testing allows fewer restrictions on daily activities

11/N

To summarize:

Claim 1: Public spending on contact tracing has a value that depends on the social context.

12/N

Claim 2: In the United States today, the benefit per $ spent on contact tracing is likely to be far smaller than the benefit per $ spent on some version of test and isolate modeled on the successes in NBA, and such universities as Cornell, Harvard, NYU, …

13/N

Claim 3: More expert exhortation is likely to do little to move the US social context toward the type of context in China and S. Korea where contact tracing did work well and might further undermine the legitimacy of the experts.

14/N

I hope we have a new administration that succeeds.

I am terrified that frustrated experts will send it on a kamikaze mission that gives expert exhortation the force of law.

Claim 4: This use of the law will not restore expert legitimacy and might destroy our democracy

15/N

Claim 5: Experts are not entitled to legitimacy. We always had to earn it. Now, we have to earn it back.

16/16