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Rhode Islanders for Data-Driven COVID Policies is a non-partisan group of citizens working towards mandates, laws, and services that will best address the endemic COVID 19 virus while allowing healthy living to resume in the Ocean State. Here is what we think will get us there.
Policies should be measured by their success in reducing adverse outcomes, not infection rates. We won’t get rid of COVID, it’s endemic now. It’s time to accept this and move on to managing outcomes of when people get COVID.
Policies should account for disparate impacts across demographics. Are children being hindered in their developmental processes by mask mandates, out of proportion to the risk they face from COVID? Are female healthcare workers more likely to have lost their job over vaccine mandates, thereby leaving women less access to healthcare providers? If we aren’t careful, COVID policies could generate inequality that would affect the population for decades and maybe even a century to come.
If a policy cannot be demonstrated to work to reduce adverse outcomes, we should discard it. If vaccine mandates for healthcare workers don’t decrease adverse outcomes within the population they’re caring for, we should end mandates and let people return to work. If masks don’t demonstrably affect transmission rates, let alone adverse outcomes in a highly vaccinated population, we should not mandate them.
Policies preventing COVID should not come at the expense of worsening outcomes in other aspects of health and wellbeing. If healthy young people are more at risk from vaccine injury than COVID, should they be encouraged to get boosters? How many serious illnesses haven’t been caught in their earliest stages because of medical staffing shortages? Plus, living in a constant state of stress is detrimental to a variety of health outcomes.
If a policy has been demonstrated to clearly improve COVID outcomes, we should be implementing it. Early treatment facilities and proactive health improvements, like losing weight or supplementing Vitamin D, may benefit the population more than restrictions, and could move the needle beyond the personal protection provided by vaccination.
Policies should have a causal and logical link between implementation and outcomes that is supported by data. If vaccines make you safer, but don’t work well at preventing transmission, then random testing for vaccinated and unvaccinated people interacting with vulnerable populations should be required, rather than mandates.
Policies should be aimed at populations that are most at risk from COVID 19. The elderly and immunocompromised face the greatest risk of COVID. Policies focused on protecting them, like random COVID testing in nursing homes, could go a lot farther than requiring their grandkids get tested and quarantined upon exposure.
Risk reduction goals should be measured against pre-COVID and every-day acceptable risk levels. Are we trying to make interactions with COVID safer than the flu was in vulnerable populations prior to the pandemic? Are we trying to make COVID safer than driving in a car 20 miles? We can’t lose sight of the very healthy human tolerance for risk as we live our daily lives.
Restrictive policies should have clear end-goal metrics. Those subjected to measures such as mandatory masking, distancing, and denied access to loved ones deserve clearly communicated end goals. Rational off-ramps for these policies must be defined and adhered to.
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