I live in Monterey County, where our county health officer is Dr. Ed Moreno. I have not been a fan, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, here and here.
But I believe in giving credit where credit is due. So here’s what I wrote in today’s Carmel Pine Cone, which is our best local newspaper.
‘We have his back’
Dear Editor,
I have not been a fan of Monterey County health officer Dr. Ed Moreno because he has tended to follow the crowd rather than the science.
But in recent weeks, there has been a sea change in his thinking: he justifies his decisions by looking at the data. He recently argued that we don’t need an indoor mask mandate because the case numbers are low, current measures seem to be working, the vaccination rate is high, and even many of the unvaccinated have natural immunity because of earlier Covid infections.
But county supervisor Luis Alejo tried to override Moreno’s judgment with a new county-wide mask mandate. Alejo’s reasoning? He said, “I think we are just trying to resort back to what our public is familiar with, what we have done before.” In other words, let’s not make our decisions based on data or reasoning but, instead, on what we’re used to. That is not, to put it mildly, good reasoning.
Those of us, and there are many, who have been critical of Dr. Moreno should assure him that, this time, we have his back.
David R. Henderson, Pacific Grove
The 5-supervisor board voted this week on whether to override him. They needed a 4-1 vote to impose an emergency 60-day indoor masking requirement. The vote was 3-2 so we’re free of that for now.
My wife called me yesterday when she saw the news announcement about the vote. I couldn’t believe how happy I was about the news.
READER COMMENTS
marcus nunes
Sep 10 2021 at 11:25pm
I found this enlightening: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/opinion/covid-science-trust-us.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion
“…At this level, it appears that the more salient features that distinguish pandemic severity are relational factors like economic equality and social trust. It comes as no surprise to even the casual observer that the pandemic struck most ferociously in countries ridden with political division and social conflict.”
MikeP
Sep 11 2021 at 12:50pm
That opinion piece is a disaster top to bottom. But the cited quote, made as though it is obvious, is supported by an example that compares high population, middle income nations selected as those which were hit worst with COVID deaths with high income, mostly low population, mostly island nations.
Let’s just say that example doesn’t prove anything like what is being claimed.
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 11 2021 at 9:26am
Do you know what the vaccination rate in the county is? I’m just curious. It’s a reasonable decision given the low population density in the country. Even Salinas is not a large city by most standards.
David Henderson
Sep 11 2021 at 4:29pm
The number I recall reading for first jabs for people over age 12 is 79.1 percent.
Daniel Kling
Sep 11 2021 at 2:07pm
I’m curious what you would attribute this change to. Both what’s your evidence of the change, and what do you think caused the change? If it were someone else writing, I would guess the (unstated) explanation is “He used to do things I disagree with, now he did something I agree with, ergo it was clearly social desirability bias before but now it’s real science because I am magically free of SDB. QED!” But I expect that’s not what’s going on here – even if we all sometimes (reasonably!) use similar heuristics for day-to-day observations.
I’m mostly just curious because the trend among public health folks and politicians has seemed to trend towards more inflexibility over time (e.g. https://www.slowboring.com/p/flexible-health), so it’s interesting to hear about movement in the other direction.
David Henderson
Sep 11 2021 at 4:31pm
You wrote:
My evidence of the change is the facts I gave in the letter. I don’t know what caused the change.
Daniel Kling
Sep 12 2021 at 12:00am
I guess I don’t understand then. What was he doing before that suggested he wasn’t justifying decisions by following data? Was he making a lot of recommendations/decisions and not supporting them with any sort of data? Or was it more that regardless of the data he cited, you thought his past decisions failed reasonable cost-benefit tests (or otherwise disagreed with them)?
I guess I need to stop being a linguistic (epistemological?) prescriptivist and accept that the definition of “following the science” is now explicitly a function of whether or not the speaker agrees with the decision.
suddyan
Sep 12 2021 at 8:27am
[I guess I don’t understand then. What was he doing before that suggested he wasn’t justifying decisions by following data?]
Kindly allow me to quote directly what David Henderson wrote in his piece: “But in recent weeks, there has been a sea change in his thinking: he justifies his decisions by looking at the data.”
I suggest you read that again slowly. Maybe after reading it a few times you will “understand then.”
David Henderson
Sep 12 2021 at 9:49am
Daniel, Did you read the links I provided to his earlier decisions and pronouncements? Those show the way he thought about it then. That’s why I said there was a sea change.
Daniel Kling
Sep 12 2021 at 2:08pm
Suddyan: Thanks for the snark! As I tried to make clear, I don’t see anything in the op-ed, the post, the replies or the links that suggests that Dr. Moreno was not using data prior to this particular decision. If you can use your superior reading skills to rustle up some quotes, I’d be much obliged.
David. I read through your links and clicked through the stories, and I still don’t really see justification for your assertion. The first link is that you (and the writer) think his modeling was bad, so I guess you could argue that he wasn’t updating it to match more recent data. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the case based on what’s in your links. E.g., a claim “if there’s 70% compliance then X” doesn’t imply that X will necessarily come to pass, because compliance could be better or worse than 70%. It just hardly screams “he has tended to follow the crowd rather than the science,” even if he was making the wrong call at the time. (Although I doubt this county-level decision would be anywhere close to the top of a list of wrong calls from April 2020).
Similarly, for the vaccine post, unless I’m missing something it just seems like the main criticism there is that the guy is too shy and “lol look his job description includes communication – what a schmuck!” And maybe there was something he could’ve been doing to aggressively push for your county to get more vaccines back in the early rollout? Again, I’m not sure how this at all implies he wasn’t making data-driven decisions.
Consider the pattern I’m certain you’ve observed in liberals. If you disagree with me: death cult! If you agree with me: Ah finally, science! I genuinely don’t think that’s what you do normally (or I wouldn’t be a regular reader!), and it’s possible I’m just missing something. But I feel like I’d be remiss not to point out that it’s just kind of weird (or at least illogical, it’s actually super common) to assume that someone’s decision-making process has changed from bad to good because they finally do something you agree with.
David Henderson
Sep 12 2021 at 7:38pm
You wrote:
I think his decision-making process in this case makes sense for the reasons I gave: he actually gave reasons. So I wasn’t assuming.
I don’t think his decision-making process in the past was good. Yes, I agree with his bottom line but I was even more impressed with his reasoning.
Does that it will always be good? No. That’s why I said, “this time.”
Michael
Sep 11 2021 at 7:40pm
I wear a mask indoors still (and generally avoid indoors settings outside my home) even though I am vaccinated and live in a state that is currently on the low end when it comes to cases. This is mainly because I have a daughter who is under age 12 and thus cannot be vaccinated. I don’t want to get a breakthough infection and pass it on to her. I haven’t dined indoors at a restaurant since the pandemic started, but I look forward to doing so again once my daughter is vaccinated.
I think Moreno’s decision here was appropriate.
Comments are closed.