A comprehensive review of the false dichotomy of COVID-19 and the evidence on public health, COVID-19 symptoms, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, mask wearing, and reinfection
Escandón, K., Rasmussen, AL, Bogoch, II etal. The false dichotomy of COVID-19 and a comprehensive review of the evidence on public health, COVID-19 symptoms, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, mask wearing, and reinfection. BMC Infect Dis 21, 710 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-021-06357-4
Commentary
We express our frustration with the unprecedented polarization and misinformation regarding the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic by scientists, policy makers, and journalists across disciplines.
This has led to the continued use of false dichotomies to polarize the debate while oversimplifying a complex issue.
This comprehensive narrative review of the study aims to dismantle the six false dichotomies, address the evidence on these topics, identify insights relevant to effective pandemic response, and highlight gaps and uncertainties in knowledge.
The topics for this review include.
1) Health and livelihoods vs. economy and livelihoods
2) Indefinite lockdown vs. unlimited resumption
3) Symptomatic vs. asymptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection
4) Droplet vs. aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2
5) All masks vs. no masking
6) SARS-CoV-2 re-infection vs. no re-infection
The importance of these interdisciplinary integrations (health, social, and physical sciences), multi-layered approaches to mitigate risk ("Emmental cheese model"), harm reduction, smart masking, mitigating interventions, and context-specific policy planning for COVID-19 response was explained. Challenges in understanding the broad clinical manifestations of COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 infection, and SARS-CoV-2 reinfection were also addressed.
These important issues of science and public health policy are not ones that should be framed as extremes, as false dichotomies between pandemics continue to be presented and they are rarely binary, simple, or uniform.
The researchers urge a nuanced understanding of science and caution against black-and-white messages, all-or-nothing guidance.
