Free Republic

The New York Times asked 700 epidemiologists to describe their COVID-19 habits, how their thinking has changed since the pandemic began, and when they think it will be safe for normal life to resume. Dismayingly, several answered that last question with a resounding never. "I expect that wearing a mask will become part of my daily life, moving forward, even after a vaccine is deployed," Amy Hobbs, a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Times. Marilyn Tseng, an assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University, said life would never revert to the way...

I am a retired physician. Over my career, I've had some contact with epidemiology. I'll be blunt here: I came away unimpressed with that field. Here's why: 1. When a pandemic strikes, I've never once witnessed an epidemiologist get his hands dirty in providing actual patient care. So where the rubber meets the road during a pandemic, they're useless. 2. Their models, and therefore their advice and counsel, are based upon best guesses from previous pandemics. It's been pretty clear during COVID-19 that in any number of cases, their accuracy has been less than impressive. 3. Typically, the confidence ranges...