The principle of prudent avoidance in public health involves creating regulations to minimize exposure to potential harms, which can have negative consequences like increased costs.

“the conventional thinking has been to embrace this idea of prudent avoidance so yeah we do that when we wear masks for covet but prudent avoidance says you create regulations to try and minimize whatever you know fields are being emitted from these power lines so the power lines pay more they're not avoiding uh a potential harm doesn't come without its own harms as we know in the covet debate about what happens with shutdowns”