In Rich Lowry’s column in the May 2 edition of The Era, he concludes by writing that we as a free people will have to decide the important questions raised by this crisis, not doctors and researchers in the labs.

I beg to differ. One can certainly argue whether invocation of science should be the ultimate authority capable of settling the question of how we should govern ourselves, but we DO NEED science to guide ourselves when we are forced to deal with such a cruel tradeoff between the economic misery caused by this pandemic and the health risk of opening up the economy in a hurry.

The SCIENCE has told us the following things about SARS-CoV-2 Virus: It is one of the most highly contagious viruses, perhaps second only to measles. People are contagious even before they develop any symptoms. There are perhaps 10 million infected people in our country who do not have any symptoms, but certainly are capable of transmitting the virus. This virus literally destroys the lung cells, can cause stroke, can damage the heart and kidneys and can turn your own immune system against your body, causing multi-organ failure.

There is approximately 12% chance of a patient requiring ventilator support, and chances of dying are approximately 88% if you require ventilator support.

We need to be able to perform approximately 500,000 tests on a daily basis and we need a workforce of several thousand people to do proper contact tracing to be able to open up the economy safely. Unfortunately we are nowhere near that number!

So people can certainly exercise their rights to ignore the mitigation measures. I truly understand their anger, frustration and the horrific financial situation they are in. However, ignoring the scientific information provided by the doctors and researchers can possibly cause another surge in COVID-19 cases and even more economic misery!

Dr. Anil Pradhan, Bradford