No. of Recommendations: 5
The about-face, allowing ignorant self-interest to replace science based public health regs is no less stupid or dangerous than eliminating speed limits and drunk driving laws, building codes, safe food production standards.
It's worth noting, though, that all of those rules that you mention involve making political decisions about the trade-offs between life safety and other goals.
You'd have fewer highway deaths if you lowered speed limits...but then everyone would have to bear the burden of longer travel times. Building codes aren't set for maximal safety, but balance cost of construction. Food production standards similarly allow some risk of contamination and/or health problems, for the sake of various economic interests. Drunk driving laws aren't maximally set or enforced either, causing higher fatalities but de facto permitting more recreational drinking.
We don't live in a country where the speed limit on highways is 40 mph, where we have the same draconian drunk driving laws as you see in some European countries, and where food safety and building standards are maximized at a "cost be damned" level.
Those aren't science questions. Science can tell us how many more fatalities we can expect if speed limits are 65 mph rather than 40 mph - and social sciences can give us an idea of the economic impacts of the different speeds. But science can't decide "should" questions - which limits we should choose, given that information.
