This quote, attributed to Nobel Laureate and economist Ronald Coase (1910-2013), is all that really needs to be said or written to explain the confusion around the COVID-19 pandemic. Decades from now we will still be debating the source, the response, and the collateral damage from the biggest public health crisis of our generation. Indeed, COVID-19 has touched virtually every soul on the planet, and we will forever be playing the game “where were you when….”
It’s “where were you when” that offers a teaching moment to anyone that values accurate data, and depends on it to do their job. When the pandemic was revealing the true nature of its threat, were we looking for the right signals? Did the right people have the presence of mind to ask the right questions? Or were advocates of a certain theory torturing the data to fit it?