Is the treatment positive expected value, or negative expected value?

Well, which one is it?

If you consider the treatments of remdesivir or monoclonal antibodies for President Trump, their application is either positive expected value or negative expected value.

If they are positive expected value, you should be for using them!  (I don’t mean that as a political statement, sub in another patient’s name if you need to.)

If they are negative expected value, you should oppose the current widespread use of remdesivir in hospitals (not necessarily in every case, of course), and you should probably oppose the Advance Market Commitment already in place for Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment, not to mention its successful advance through various trials.

I don’t see anyone taking those stances.

Instead, I see commentators — including highly esteemed public health experts — claiming there is not yet enough data, “expressing reservations,” referring to other public health catastrophes, referring to more general irresponsible habits of the patient under consideration, and serving up various other rhetorical devices to indicate a negative attitude toward the treatment without actually saying “I think this treatment is negative expected value.”

That is a very bad thought and writing habit!

Made worse by Twitter, I might add.  You are trying to create negative affect and mood affiliation without making the corresponding epistemic and predictive commitment.

Please just say you think it is negative expected value, and then apply that view consistently across the board.  Stand your ground and defend it.

Or if you think it is positive expected value, praise its use, and then of course it is fine to add qualifiers and reservations.

If you genuinely have no opinion (ha), it is fine to say that too, but then you can drop the negative rhetoric and maybe don’t tweet about it at all.

To be sure, there are various heterogeneities and I am not applying the appropriate qualifiers in each sentence above, for reasons of expositional convenience.  For instance, is Trump different from other patients?  Are the treatments being applied at the right time?  Who exactly has the private information here?  And so on.  Incorporating those factors should not change the basic analysis above, though for the most part they should push you toward a more positive attitude toward the treatments.

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