The toddler here at home has recently been able to take a corona test independently. It took some practice testing, but saves a lot of clamor about sticks that we would stick in her nose too deep, too fast or too long — while she herself goes further and longer in her nose than we dared. Still a nice success, I thought as a muddling-through educator. But that still seems like wasted effort, because the cabinet is considering dropping the advice ‘testing in case of complaints’, as well as the advice to go into isolation in case of a positive test.
To be able to decide on this, input was requested from old friend OMT, but also from new knowledge MIT, the Social Impact Team.
The OMT says: scale down, those general advice. Corona is now endemic, according to the OMT. Separate policy is therefore no longer necessary, the same advice should apply to corona as to other respiratory infections. Testing is not part of that; however, people should ‘stay at home when sick’.
Refreshingly readable
The MIT advice is clearly written and thoroughly substantiated with footnotes, sources and appendices. Refreshing, because with OMT advice, the authority often has to come more from medical jargon than from readability and detailed substantiation.
There is also a difference in terms of content: MIT is considerably more reserved about scaling down the corona advice. Yes, there are social and economic benefits to scaling down, but there are also significant drawbacks. Material wealth may increase slightly. Economically vulnerable groups such as flex workers and the self-employed are less likely to lose income if they no longer have to go into isolation after a positive test without symptoms. Socially vulnerable people are slightly more likely to have social contacts. The biggest losers are, unsurprisingly, the medically vulnerable. Scaling down the advice not only leads to physical health risks for them, but also to stress, anxiety and a feeling of being abandoned by society and the government.
What may also not improve with scaling down is social cohesion. Patient organizations and the Social Cultural Planning Office predict that healthy and vulnerable groups will come up against each other. The medically vulnerable could lose their trust in government and society, just like people who run a higher risk of infection because of their work in, for example, healthcare, education or a distribution center. The latter group, the MIT emphasizes, is not so much concerned about acute symptoms, but about the risk of lung covid.
See if necessary to scale up again
Another disadvantage of scaling down: once scaled down, you cannot easily scale up the measures again. Re-introduction will lead to a population-wide decrease in confidence in the government — assuming, I would add, that confidence could fall even further after the shocking report of the parliamentary committee of inquiry on natural gas extraction in Groningen.
And then there is the fact that about three-quarters of the Dutch find the corona policy as it is now proportional — and of the 25 percent who do not think so, the vast majority think that there are too few measures, according to research by the Behavioral Unit of the RIVM. In the ‘practice circles’ of MIT, all discussion partners, from patient federation and employee organizations to employers’ umbrella, youth council and events sector, said they could live with the current corona advice.
In itself, of course, no reason to keep them. But abolishing it, as the OMT recommends, is also not self-evident: current policy has support, the MIT shows that scaling down has important social disadvantages, and the cabinet has previously promised to seriously consider social and economic impact in corona decision-making.
Nevertheless, in the coverage of the OMT advice last week, it seemed as if the decision to scale down had actually been taken; the media hardly mentioned the MIT advice. The coming weeks will show whether this will be discussed in the Council of Ministers.
