Mike Harris

Introduction: Over the past six months of the COVID epidemic a sharp divide has emerged. In one camp, most public health experts believe that the lockdowns in place are keeping us from unmitigated disaster and millions of deaths. In the other camp, a disparate group of scientists have argued that the lockdowns are unnecessary and causing far more damage than what would be caused by COVID if life was allowed to return mostly to normal. Most people are aware of these two camps, and may have read some of the articles arguing in one direction or the other. However most articles are either at a very high level, and don't explain the specifics of the strategy and beliefs; Or they are at a very technical level, and are too bogged down with mathematics and terminology to be comprehensible. In this article I want to blaze a middle path, providing enough detail to understand the beliefs and arguments of both the camps, while not being so technical. To aid in this goal I have developed interactive tools to visualize the implications of the various theories proposed. These tools are obviously vast simplifications so the precise numbers produced are less important than the overall dynamics. The disagreements between these two camps span a wide range of topics: * Strategic: What is the right approach for dealing with COVID. * Moral: How do you balance the loss of life from the epidemic with the loss of liberty from lockdown measures. * Tactical: What actions are most effective, for instance how well do masks work? This article is aimed at explaining the strategic disagreements. Science and data cannot decide these moral tradeoffs, only tell you what the tradeoffs are likely to be. The tactical decisions are also inherently technical in nature, depending on the precise numbers rather than the broad strokes. This article is aimed at an American audience and uses data or numbers for the United States unless otherwise specified. However none of the ideas are unique to Ameri