#julia marcus

If we think back to March, there was some very binary thinking going on around two options. One was: Let’s just stay home until there’s a vaccine. And the other was: Let’s just go back to business as usual. Of course, there’s a million things in between; risk is not binary. I think we’ve gotten out of some of that binary thinking. But, in a way, I think we have unfortunately continued to apply binary thinking, not just to staying at home versus business as usual, but also to masks to schools to Sweden, you name it. Any hot button topic right now has become dichotomized in a way that I find really concerning, especially around scientific decision-making and also for people making everyday decisions who are trying to navigate this. There has to be nuance in all this, and I feel like nuance died sometime in March.