Dear Governor Newsom,

I received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and I am now a postdoctoral scholar at UCSF. Several of my works have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I am one of the many working diligently on medical technology to improve the health of the populations of this state, this country, and the world. Permit me to take a moment to discuss science and civil rights with you.

Science has several fundamental components: development of a hypothesis, comparison of said hypothesis to data for verification. A mathematical Model is an equation that the creator hopes models the world accurately in some interesting way. Notably, mathematical modeling is not science. Instead, mathematical modeling can be (but is not necessarily) a useful method for generating interesting and quantifiable hypotheses. When someone presents a model, some immediate questions are in order: what are the assumptions of the model, are those assumptions valid, what are the error bars on the predictions, is that amount of error useful?

You have often cited the use of mathematical models regarding infections and deaths from Covid-19 for justification of your policies. To my knowledge, there has not been a single mathematical model that accurately predicted the Number of Covid-19 infections and deaths as a function of time and space accurately. There are simple metrics that indicate the failure of these models: an army hospital expeditiously built in Seattle saw 0 patients before being taken down, Mercy hospital ship in Los Angeles has seen very few patients, and the hospitals of California have not seen nearly the number of patients predicted by any model. Since the data contradicts the hypotheses, the continued use of these models to dictate policy is decidedly not scientific.

An initial house arrest order (which you euphemistically call “shelter-in-place”) may have been excusable given the uncertainty of the Infection Mortality Rate and infectiousness of Covid-19. However, only a few days after shelter-in-place was ordered, I accurately estimated the infection mortality rate of the disease as less than 0.5% and probably closer to 0.2%, which is approximately the infection mortality rate of the flu. (I published these numbers on ndworkblog.wordpress.com on 3/8/20). These numbers, far less than the 2-3% originally reported by the media, continue to be validated with time.

Even so, the house arrest order remains. Notably, the executive orders that you are issuing, without approval of the legislature, eliminate several of our unalienable rights enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights including the right to assembly and freedom of religious worship.

Approximately 60% of the population must be infected and become immune in order for herd immunity to be developed. Without a vaccine, there is no way to avoid approximately 60% of the population becoming infected. Imagine you were to take every person in California and put them in a bubble. Then no one would become sick while they remained in that bubble, and the low infection numbers would indicate success. However, as soon as the people were released from their bubble prisons, they would become infected at the same rate as before. You are not helping by keeping people imprisoned; you are merely delaying the inevitable.

There are, however, things that you can do to help:

• You can encourage young healthy people to return to work early and encourage older or unhealthy people to shelter-in-place as long as possible. This would let those most likely to survive be infected and overcome the disease, developing herd immunity with fewer deaths.
• The healthier people are, the more likely they are to survive the disease. Thus, open the parks and beaches to permit people to fully exercise. Not doing so will ensure weaken people’s bodies, increasing the number of Covid19 fatalities.
• Finally, people have worked and saved their entire lives to build many forms of business. Your orders to close businesses have destroyed many of the livelihoods these people have built. Open the businesses, let the public choose the actions that are best for ourselves, and end the tyranny of dictating by decree which businesses get to survive and which are expendable (or non-essential).

Your orders to close beaches and parks, to mandate house arrest, and to dictatorially decide which businesses are permitted to be open are destructive.

I offer my advice at your request. Please feel free to contact me at any time.

Sincerely,

-Nicholas Dwork