Jay Bhattacharya

And so I could understand at the time

especially in the face of deep uncertainty, that something had to be done to guide people.

But what you're not allowed to do is assume that the thing you're doing is going to work, right?

I'm going to do a lockdown.

That'll solve the problem.

You're also not allowed to assume that the thing that you're doing will have no harms, right?

So you close the schools.

You know for certain that you're going to harm a generation of children.

That's a certainty.

Will that suppress the spread of the disease?

We don't know how the disease spreads.

Is it aerosol?

Is it droplet?

Is it, you know, there's a hundred uncertainties.

You still have to do that kind of honest calculation and you have to convey that deep uncertainty to the public at large.

I could be persuaded that that could be a reasonable thing, potentially.

But let's think about the actual context.

So in March of 2020, I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

It's the first time I ever wrote an op-ed in my life.

You're all handed this, but that's a weirdly scary thing.