Heppenheimer
Well-Known Member
Another example. In medicine, we often need to make initial treatments choices before we have all of our necessary clinical data. As this comes in, you fine-tune the plan, or in some cases, you make a complete 180 degree turn in treatment strategy when the initial suspicion ends of up being wrong. You don't just observe the patient and possibly let them crash while waiting for result of every test. For example, most patient's will receive initial empiric treatment for pneumonia based on what antibiotics will likely work, not based on precise culture results that demonstrate the exact infecting organism and its antibiotic sensitivities. In most cases, this information will never be known, but the "good enough" treatment will work nonetheless.Yes (mostly) and no (sort of, with lots of nuance).
In this specific case, Yes I would like them to get some more data first. But, no, I don't want them to wait forever. At some point, they need to give some opinions based on what's known so far. And those will change as what's known so far changes. Cannot wait until we know everything, need to make some educated guesses as we go. But, also shouldn't be making those when we don't even know enough to start.
Today, for Omnicron, I get that we're early enough that there isn't really a "known so far" as even a little seed to base stuff on. Which actually brings up a better question. Why don't know already know how Omnicron is spreading in the US? It's certainly here and spreading already. Anyone who thinks we've managed to keep Omnicron out and that it's not here yet, I've got a bridge you may be interested in, cheap.
Or, perhaps a sure ROTR boarding group strategy. See, first you get to the park at soft open, then you hover your finger over the button at exactly real open, make sure you're already past the tap points and inside the park. Then you remember that plan is 2 years old and you've already missed your chance to ride ROTR because "known so far" has completely changed.
We can extrapolate this idea to public health. Right now, I don't think we need to rush into doing anything different until we either know more about omicron or have evidence that out existing strategies for dealing with COVID will be inadequate for this variant (but I do think we should be doing more against delta anyway, but that's a different debate...) However, we should take the necessary "do no harm" precautions, like at least doing the preliminary work on reconfiguring the mRNA vaccines, in case this ends up being needed.
