Osler's Razor

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill welcomed students back last week in the usual rituals of move-in day: Parents pulled up in vans, IKEA furniture was carried up stairways, and roommates awkwardly met one another.

One week later, they sent them all away.

The students arrived, they went to big parties, and created a COVID cluster of 130 positive cases.

Unfortunately, that scene is already on display across the country-- well before most colleges start up. There is a real problem with staking any re-opening plan on the self-discipline of 19-year-olds. We all were 19 at some point, and if you think back to the invulnerability we felt at that age, this all starts to make sense.

For the same reason, it doesn't make sense to let college football play because the players (mostly) want to play. We don't leave important policy decisions up to 19-year-old guys because they are terrible at cost-benefit evaluation. They are biologically programmed that way-- it's the same reason that we draft kids that age in times of war. 

This is going to be a tumultuous month.