In the New York Times Magazine this weekend David Wallace-Wells has an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci. I knew David a little bit when I was at the Washington Monthly and I've followed him with admiration ever since, so I was surprised at how combative the interview was. In one sense, David was just asking tough questions and letting Fauci clear the air, but a few too many of the questions were premised on MAGA nonsense that really didn't deserve to see the light of day. Fauci got noticeably annoyed at several points, and I don't blame him.
That said, there are two big things I'd take away from the interview. The first is this:
Wallace-Wells: Did we do enough to communicate the age skew of the disease?...I still think, honestly to this day, that almost no one appreciates just how wide that age skew really is, given that the risk to someone in their 80s or 90s is perhaps hundreds of times as high as it is to someone in their 20s or 30s.
Fauci: You are hitting on some terrific points. Did we say that the elderly were much more vulnerable? Yes. Did we say it over and over and over again? Yes, yes, yes. But somehow or other, the general public didn’t get that feeling that the vulnerable are really, really heavily weighted toward the elderly. Like 85 percent of the hospitalizations are there. But if you ask the person in the street, they may say, “Oh, yeah, elderly are more vulnerable, but everybody’s really vulnerable” — which is true, but to a much lesser extent.
This is an example of something that doesn't get appreciated enough. There was an unending cacophony of voices during the first year of the pandemic. There was the CDC, but there was also WHO. There was the Donald Trump show. There were TV doctors. There were local mayors, governors, and health departments. There were charlatans. There was Twitter. Everybody had an opinion.
But we forget all that with the passage of time. Everything gets mushed together and then blamed on "the CDC." But if you go back and look you'll often find that the CDC didn't make the recommendations that we now think are so wrong. Rather, it was the hive voice.
This isn't to excuse every mistake. Some of the CDC's recommendations were wrong. This leads to my second takeaway. It comes from Don McNeil, former COVID reporter for the New York Times. His review of the Fauci interview is scathing—much too scathing, I'd say. But he makes this key point:
The truth is that many of the early guesses made by science proved wrong. When the data changed, good scientists changed their advice.
Read the Fauci interview for examples of this. The COVID virus surprised scientists at nearly every turn. It spread asymptomatically. It was airborne. It mutated wildly. It was more transmissible than anyone expected.
All of these things required scientists to change their advice. That's not a symptom of incompetence, it's a symptom of how the real world works. Fauci acknowledges that some things could have happened more quickly, but overall I think most people don't realize just how fast science worked during the pandemic. We complain about the fact that it took a few months to learn about asymptomatic transmission, for example, but this is something that normally might have taken years. As near as I can tell, scientists blew the doors off of previous speed records. Most of them should be getting medals, not Twitter mobs at their door.
My own personal (and BIG) bitch is that the government ceded the mask narrative to the hive. Early on, with a shortage of 95 and KN95 masks, we were encourage to use cloth or whatever as masks. Later, when mask production caught up, we had a majority of the population still using "face coverings" in lieu of real 95 masks and the difference is HUGE. Those other things don't seal worth a damn and helped the world claim that masks don't work, which they F'in do if you use the proper equipment. So yes, another instance of having too many conflicting voices muddy the waters.
Certainly at this point with low masking numbers, absolutely nobody who wants the added protection of a mask should be wearing anything but a high quality *95 version. From what I can see there hasn't been much communication to that effect (YMMV, as this for me is a remote observation based on consumption of US digital media; I don't watch US commercial TV or listen to terrestrial radio. Maybe y'all do hear "high quality mask" urgings?).
Lots of folks here in Beijing still walk around with the low quality variety. Almost worthless as I understand it when total masking numbers are down to 15-20% of the population.
Yeppers, we're still masked; well-fitting N95 masks. At this point, we're just aristos who deem it not seeming to allow the ruck to gaze upon our naked visages.
Slight push back....
We had no flu or cold season(s) during Covid with just the poor quality masks and distancing. Even just a standard flu season on top of Covid would have caused many more problems since Covid put a lot of strain on our health care system.
As for Covid, the study in Bangladesh used surgical masks if I recall correctly, and they helped. Not perfect, just rates of transmission dropped significantly.
Yes, we needed more N95 masks, and should have adopted the Korean mask, KN95, style. But the steps we took helped even though there were not good enough to have a huge effect on Covid directly since they killed off flu transmission.
Yea, I still think there's a misunderstanding about masks "working". N95s protect you, regular face covering help to protect others from you. So yea, not a selling point most Americans can comprehend, but there was a public health benefit to enough people wearing even handkerchiefs.
These are great points. And yet, we still have "smart" (George Mason economists) squealing that masks did nothing and mask mandates were the worst affront ever.
regular face covering help to protect others from you.
Sure. I guess my point is, if very high percentages of folks are wearing masks—even "regular" masks—a helpful herd effect kicks in because of the reduced exhalation of virules. The surrounding air is safer.
But if masking is not near universal, one really must wear a high quality, well-fitted model for adequate protection.
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There’s an awful lot that can be said on this subject. But to limit myself to a single point, I believe that the mainstream Left became too heavily invested in playing up the fear of it all. As the risks came into ever sharper focus, people with the loudest megaphones grew increasing shrill. If it weren’t for the invasion of Ukraine pushing Covid off the front page, I think many voices would still be looking for the off ramp.
At the time of the Ukraine invasion, roughly 2,000 Americans were dying each day of Covid. Despite vaccines being available, Covid deaths were accelerating again very rapidly and had not yet peaked.
Ukraine alone certainly didnt push Covid off the front page, it was the rapid decline in covid deaths. Its not a coincidence that the off ramp occurred at the exact time that hospitalizations and deaths fell dramatically and stayed low.
How fearful you should be of something that was killing 3,000 Americans/day the first winter and still killing 2,000/day the second winter is up to each individual...but thats alot of death and illness.
I was most struck by the people who downplayed the dangers from day one. The people who downplayed the virus because it probably wouldnt kill many Americans and might be like the flu at worst didnt seem to update their take even as 2-3,000 people a day were dying. Thats....odd.
I recall seeing an interview with a Trump supporter insisting Covid wasn't bad--only 1% died. Yep, 3 million people dying from Covid--no biggie.
For reference, US has around 3 million deaths a year from all causes.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-12-30..latest&facet=none&country=~USA&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false suggests that by the time of Russia's invasion of Ukraine (24 February - 7-day average at that point was 1855 a day) we had already passed the peak of deaths and were on a rather steep decline.
I didnt mean to imply the official invasion date was important. I should have said 'leading up to the invasion', or something like that.
The comment i was responding to referenced the increasing media attention being given to Ukraine. This increasing media attention began in late 2021 and was in full stride well before Russia officially began the war.
If hes looking for why Covid warnings were louder before the war and appeared to tail off after the war had begun, it likely has a lot to do with the trajectory of covid infections and deaths, not the war in Ukraine.
Oh please, what a bunch of gaslighting crap. Trump decided that the pandemic was a threat to his reelection, and EVERYTHING the right wing has thought and done since then flows directly from that. Full stop.
And now the MAGAs won't let Trump take credit for Operation Warp Speed because that would mean the vaccines are good, and that's heresy for that crowd. A certain irony there.
(I don't give Trump as much credit as he'd like. The vaccines were already created and being tested well before OWS began in spring of 2020. But still the funding was the right thing to do.)
"I don't give Trump as much credit as he'd like"
I don't give him any at all. There is zero doubt in my mind that nobody who came up with, designed, or implemented OWS was named "Trump" and I refuse to give any credit to an imbecile of a president who at *best* could be said to have not gotten (much) in the way of the vaccine development and rollout.
Trump's big OWS job as the president was to freaking GET PEOPLE TO TAKE THE VACCINES, and he fucked that up royally by turning vaccination against a world-breaking viral plague into a political issue.
OWS succeeded *despite* Trump, not because of him.
And that includes this endless demonization of Dr Fauci, btw. He was a huge threat to Trump's ability to create an alternate pandemic reality, and so of course you guys have been going after him ever since.
I can’t help but read your comment and think of Menken: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
I think the larger population did internalize that COVID was a threat to the elderly and immunocompromised. What we experienced was example number 1 billion that there is a large fraction of the human population that does not give a hoot about anyone other than themselves. Then once they had had COVID, and didn't die from it, they were done being inconvenienced in any way, egged on by the grifters of course.
I think the most devastatingly bad (political) decision was to keep messing with school openings / closings after the vaccines came out. That did real damage to credibility and learning outcomes, and made the working class ready for a revolution.
there is a large fraction of the human population that does not give a hoot about anyone other than themselves.
But also lots of ignorance. Lots. As evidenced by the gigantically worse covid mortality numbers in Trump-leaning districts. I mean, people taking horse medicine might not have cared about others, sure. But they likewise didn't care about themselves (or, more likely, were just stupid fucks).
"But they likewise didn't care about themselves (or, more likely, were just stupid fucks)."
This is an under-appreciated tragedy of all this. People taking invermectin or quinine or (god help us) drinking bleach all obviously were concerned about Covid--they went out of their way to ingest horse paste etc. because they thought it would help. But because a bunch of republican assholes with fingers to the wind thougth that it would benefit them, they had their fears of Covid turned away from actually protective measures and towards poison placebos.
How many people died as a result?
It's just stochastics. If a certain fraction of doctors were on teevee everyday yelling about how you don't need cancer medication, as colloidal silver, witch hazel, and incense are better treatment, even if the Kevin Drums of this world would know better, tens to hundreds of thousands of others would not. Same thing with Fox&Co.
It may have been a bad political decision to not open schools faster but that is to discount the concerns of teachers whose concerns, I suppose, don’t count in any event. But where I live 20% of the Covid cases were people under 20.
That the students may have been at lower risk but the teachers and staff weren't is something no one seems to care about.
I have a relative who worked at a middle school. They tried re-opening before full vaccinations kicked in.....
After a few weeks, absenteeism was way up--kids either had covid or were directly exposed (family member had covid). With 20, 30+++ % out, and some staff issues--they went back to fully online.
Closed schools, schools closing on short notice (or even longer notice), kids being quarantined, etc. is very hard on parents.
Setting aside the science which is rightly lionized (look at historical science and compare...) by the author and focusing of the hive mind/voice, illustrates the nature of culture under pressure, especially our American culture. Asimov said it and while other cultures demonstrate the same characteristics, the core of American culture from the beginning has that magnificent capacity to step on a rake at every turn yet grin and trudge on.
There is no real point here except to observe, maybe lament a bit, and trudge on.
But if you go back and look you'll often find that the CDC didn't make the recommendations that we now think are so wrong.
Zero doubt. They've become an (extremely) unfairly maligned government agency. In general, "MAGA on Covid" has been the single most audacious and successful example of right wing ref working of my lifetime.
This isn't to excuse every mistake. Some of the CDC's recommendations were wrong.
Erm, sure. But quite honestly (as Kevin states a few lines down), "it's brand new" is frankly very strong grounds for "excusing" mistakes. I'm having a hard time coming up with any that weren't 90% a result of the virus's newness, and that includes Fauci's infamous recommendations on masks.
Those "infamous recommendations" were motivated by the sever mask shortage; they were an attempt to save enough PPE for medical staff. This was clearly communicated at the time but everybody ignores it just to get something on Fauci (or some other expert).
TFG cut the CDC's budget for overseas outposts/labs by 80% and got rid of the NSC's pandemic preparedness office in the summer of 2017. Add in the total incompetence/malfeasance of everybody else he brought on, it was unlikely that any disaster would be handled well - even with competent people still working in various departments. TFG didn't like competent people - they made him look bad by comparison. He liked shouty idiots.
And Fauci was right to worry about PPE - nobody realized just how thin the supply chains had gotten. Very quietly, lean had become skeletal. ALL masks and most other PPE disappeared within a day or two of masking directives coming out up here in NW WA.
My wife and I paid absolutely no attention to most social media. We went directly to the CDC and FDA sites, Johns Hopkins, NEJM, trusted medical columnists at the Seattle Times, etc. They actually did a pretty good job and did, in fact, get a lot of stuff right fairly quickly under crisis conditions.
I’ll push back on the ‘clearly communicated’ statement. I don’t question the competence of the CDC in virology, immunology, public health and medical issues in general. But the communication was unsuccessful — too many people heard ‘Masks don’t work’; not ‘We don’t have enough masks, we need to reserve them to protect those most exposed.’
I happen to have some experience in designing effective communications; which requires testing, rewriting and more testing. That’s why political campaigns do A/B testing of e-mails, slogans, ads, etc. CDC needs to hire some experts in this area.
They're understaffed as it is. That HHS didn't bring together comm specialists with CDC experts is pretty much a Trump failure.
CDC HAS experts in health communication, hundreds of them. Their literal job title is “Health Communication Specialist” and the best of them know health communication is in fact a lot more than just slogans and field testing.
The problem is that CDC leadership, made up almost entirely of MDs, biology PhDs, and bench scientists, has little respect for the agency’s communication staff and repeatedly overruled them in messaging with the public, before AND after the administration change.
And yeah, I know this because of exactly why you think I know this.
Effective communication, that is, communication intended to shape behavior, is more than testing, but testing is essential. I know this because I’m a behavioral scientist.
Managing communications with the public was the responsibility of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which held daily briefings early in the pandemic. The CDC deals with routine health issues, but when a once in a century pandemic arises, the White House is inevitably going to take charge. So the CDC does need the ability to clearly communicate with the public during normal times, but not so much in the middle of a pandemic.
For the record, the CDC advice to the public on masks can be found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20200328191857/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html
The CDC said that sick people should wear masks when around other people if possible, and added: “If you are NOT sick: You do not need to wear a facemask unless you are caring for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a facemask). Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be saved for caregivers.”
I don't know of any polling at the time asked people whether they thought face masks didn't work. Assuming that a significant number of people did think that, I doubt the belief was due to the CDC advice. The CDC didn't explicitly say that facemasks would reduce transmission of the disease, but it's pretty obvious that they wouldn't be giving this advice if they didn't believe that.
...they were an attempt to save enough PPE for medical staff. This was clearly communicated at the time...
This. It was indeed communicated. I became somewhat obsessed by the controversy, and have done a deep dive or two into the evidence. Long story short, in the infamous 60
Minutes interview that the lunatics use as a "Gotcha!" moment, Dr. Fauci clearly acknowledges he was concerned about inadequate PPE supplies for medical professionals. I see no nefarious gaslighting conspiracy.
Also, while it's impossible to read Fauci's then-mind, I believe the evidence suggests there actually were legitimate doubts about the efficacy of general public masking in, say, March of 2023. WHO didn't change their recommendation to "pro masking" until June! (CDC did so in early April.) I believe part of the early uncertainty among public health officials regarding masking flowed from concerns that the general public might in many cases 1) wear them incorrectly, and/or 2) use them as a magic shield to ignore social distancing.
Some of this appears misguided now, sure. But again, it was a brand new freaking virus. And, at least in the case of America's CDC (if not WHO), a pro-masking recommendation had become official policy by April—very early in the pandemic as we can now see.
I just read Don McNeal's article and I agree one hundred percent with it. Wallace Wells set up basically all his questions as an attempt to put down Fauci; the whole thing struck me as a young bear trying to fight the leading bear while having no chance to compete.
Scathing? I wouldn't put it that way.
More like someone who's been immersed in the crisis from the start, looking at the work of someone who just dropped by. The way we of flyover country feel when the metroplex reporters drop in for a week and emerge with their "In Darkest Michigan" articles. (Applebee's salad bar, anyone?)
'Scathing' is what happened when David Hackett Fischer was invited to discuss a Mel Gibson movie: "In short, 'The Patriot' is to history what 'Godzilla' is to biology"
Agree entirely. Donald McNeil was perhaps the most reliable journalist covering the pandemic, and his unfortunate firing by the NYT was a tremendous loss. The Wallace-Wells interview is an example of how the Times appropriates MAGA and right-wing nonsense in its critiques of government. (How much of that is rightward-leaning journalists or pressure from the editorial higher-ups can be debated.)
The entire McNeil piece is worth reading. This, in particular, is a much-needed corrective to some retrospective whining that has become accepted wisdom:
People talk about "lockdowns" and "school closures" as though our totalitarian overlords completely shut down society. That's a compete rewrite of history, and recent enough we should know better. The same people pushing the idea that much of the common-sense public health measures were draconian also want you to think the the health risks were no big deal. But Covid killed more than 1.1 million Americans. That is undeniably a horrible tragedy, as true today as everyone would have acknowledged in early 2020 had we known what was to come.
We had almost no tests until mid-March and no easy-test regimen (walk-in clinics, sidewalk tents) until 2021
Just a nit to pick: I had two PCR tests at a walk-in clinic in Seattle, in October, 2020. Needed them to board a flight to Asia.
Wallace-Wells is a dishonest hack.
https://www.mattball.org/search?q=wallace-wells
At one point in the pandemic I tried to figure out what percentage of nursing home residents died. It's not a number that is directly reported, but I found enough info to make a guess: 10-15%.
We never really acted like we should in terms of elderly deaths. We should have advised people to not have grandma in the nursing home. We should have instituted very strict requirements for nursing home safety.
Instead, we argued about what mask to wear while walking in the park, and demanded that schools closed, because in some bizarre covid version of seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, keeping a kid off the playground would save the lives of elderly people, but making nursing homes segregate patients entering from hospitals was just too much.
keeping a kid off the playground would save the lives of elderly people
It was perfectly rational to move classes online until, say, late winter of 2021, when vaccines had become available to inocculate teachers. I agree school closures much beyond this were unreasonable. I spoke with my high school aged nephew in Boston. I think they went back in April, 2021. Which ultimately means they did only lost one full semester (fall, 2020) to online classes, and portions of two others.
People have a hard time accepting the fact that science (and life) is a matter of probabilities, not certainties.
Could anything else so perfectly illustrate the complete disgrace of the conservative mind as their reactions to covid and Anthony Fauci?
There is no seriousness or decency in anything they do or think, despite their loud assertions, bellicosity and egotism.
Nothing they have done has demonstrated any value at any point in history. Why is that not an issue?
Most epidemics have high mortality rates for very young people (under 10) and older people, although the 1918 epidemic had a peak at 30 years old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
The age distribution actually seems to have changed somewhat in the course of the 1918 epidemic. The idea that it was a mistake to close schools in 2020 is just wrong, even in hindsight. If the pandemic had been more normal and as deadly as the 1918 one it could have been a disaster not to protect the very young. Maybe schools should have been opened up earlier when the age distribution became clearer, but making such decisions is difficult even without the partisan chaos which we actually had at the time. Obviously more should have been done to protect the elderly, although a lot of this was in the hands of private nursing home operators, but from a societal point of view protecting the young is more important.
For the most part we know a lot of things that have to be done to be prepared for the next pandemic, but there is little sign that those things will be done. But if it is decided to keep schools open and the epidemic is more normal in age distribution and/or more deadly there could be a major calamity.
The age profile of severe disease for covid was known pretty well by February or March of 2020.
One thing that has never been communicated well is “long Covid”. We see stories about it and they are pretty scary. And most of the stories involve young/middle aged people. We also see stories indicating Covid leaving long term or perhaps permanent damage on the heart and other organs. But how dangerous is it really? Are the percentages of long Covid the same as the percentages of deaths age wise? And how many people get Covid where symptoms persist for months or permanently? Is there a difference in long Covid by strain?
Just because you didn’t die or get hospitalized doesn’t necessarily mean the disease isn’t dangerous. Where I live there were zero Covid deaths for people under 20 years old and I can look that up with ease. But how many of the young people had/have long Covid? How many have learning disabilities or organ damage because of it? Is that also zero? I have no way of knowing.
An article came out in the Seattle Times around March/April of 2020 that included the first good look at how COVID was affecting humans. The primary attack was on the endothelial linings of the blood vessels. The first version to hit was particularly nasty - getting deep into the lungs where it attacked the alveoli (the tiny sacks where venous blood releases carbon dioxide and absorbs oxygen to become arterial blood. That was a double whammy - effective oxygen absorption was severely reduced and blood cells were being released into areas they should not have been able to get to - causing inflammation and that Styrofoam appearance in lung X-rays.
The author of the article quoted a doctor as saying: "This is the first time I've had to tell patients to stop talking on their cell phones because their blood oxygen levels were too low!" FYI - we don't have oxygen receptors - we detect high carbon dioxide levels in our blood - that's what actually triggers the sensation of respiratory distress.
COVID didn't confine itself only to the lungs though. Basically it can indiscriminately damage arteries and veins throughout the body and organs. So I'm not surprised that some long term damage could be done. That includes possible physical degradation of the blood-brain barrier - fine arteries and veins with the endothelial cells under attack - possibly the second most dangerous vulnerability after the alveoli.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. Since then more than half the population has gotten Covid. Is this stuff in all of them? Some? Very few? Is it more prevalent in any particular age group? Is the damage permanent? Do the new strains have the same effect? What if you get Covid but we’re vaccinated, is the effect the same? What if you took Paxlovid, does that make a difference?
Perhaps there is more information out there that I haven’t seen, but since I’ve kept relatively close track I don’t think if such information exists that it has been widely disseminated.
The only statistic that I can easily look up is deaths, and for me that’s not sufficient to determine how worried I should be about the disease.
Eric Topol (head of translational medicine at Scripps Institute https://erictopol.substack.com ) has made several posts on the incidence of long covid including links to studies on the effect of vaccination and Paxlovid. The answer to both questions appears to be, yes, they make a meaningful but not overwhelming (completely preventative) difference. Kind of like vaxxing vs COVID in general. Worthwhile, but not getting COVID is the only sure way to avoid sequelae.
Someone comes to you and asks, perhaps urgently, “What’s going on?!? What should I do?!?” As a scientist with little or no data, what should you do? You can guess “early guesses…” but the Telephone Game and urgency (including among the leadership looking for someone to offload/justify the decisions they must make) means all the caveats and equivocations in your answer will melt away. And of course as additional data arrives that guess (interesting how “conclusion” wasn’t the word used) could very well be shown to be wrong. The classic Butter! No! Margarine! No! Butter! cycle results.
Or you can say “I don’t know.” From the standpoint of “science” and its use as an absolute “Because Science!” that is the correct answer at the time, but the people asking the question are going to be insistent and the leadership among them looking to have their posteriors protected so they will not understand and will keep asking. How long will you be able and willing to keep saying “I don’t know?” Your calling/profession/reputation among the laypeople/funding is predicated on having “the answers” and admitting you don’t know run contrary to that.
Seriously, what a dumbass question. This isn’t ancient history. Early on and in real time, the “experts” stated the data which showed the “age skew.” The reason for the recommendations on things like social distancing and masking wasn’t to stop all transmission or to avoid death for “someone in their 20s or 30s.” We were asked to do them, as a society, to slow transmission in order to flatten the curve for hospitalizations so that the healthcare system wasn’t overwhelmed all at once.
But instead, Orange Jesus in his political calculation decided to stake out positions at odds with science at every turn which his band of propagandists and brain-dead follower delighted in. So rather than effective leadership with clear messaging and a rallying of resources that could’ve shortened the crisis, we got stupid shit like the Hydroxychloroquine quick fix and other silver bullets the “experts” were “hiding” from us. We were given a sloppily organized and corruptly administered allocation of healthcare resources. We got zealotry in the anti-mask movement, largely because Orange Jesus’ vanity prevented him from wearing a mask. We were given a diet of steady denialism and told to “open up” by the “pro-life” party because the economy is more important than grandma.
Meanwhile, as Wallace-Wells grills Fauci, Orange Jesus is busy sitting on his fat ass, ‘truthing’ threats to DA’s and Judges, instead of being bothered with any questions about the colossal pandemic cluster fuck he oversaw.
A key reason why most people got these things wrong is because China misinformed authorities around the world from the start. There was enough evidence on Chinese social media that should have set off alarms around the world.
But for me, the foundational issue of the pandemic was the broad failure of authorities to assume the worst and hope for the best. You'll always incur criticism regardless of your strategy, but similar to a failsafe strategy, if you assume the worst, you won't get caught off-guard.
Pandemic modeling shows that school closures are effective, not because they protect children, who are often less vulnerable to viral illness (NOT viral infection), but because they seriously slow transmission.
School closures were less about protecting kids from COVID. They were about providing fewer mobile viral incubators for coronavirus to propagate.
Around 10% of kids in the U.S. are homeschooled, and they're fine. Basically, the need to get kids back in school was 100% economic. We found a couple flimsy studies to justify putting our kids (and their extended families) in harms way, and voila... "How dare we consider closing schools?! Or at minimum, gasp, masking!".
But no, we actually have no idea what having Covid multiple times now will do to our kids (and especially their parents) long-term. We lean on the "schools are safe" studies like they're the gospel, but disregard the hundreds of studies sounding the alarm about what Long Covid may be about to do to our society.
@humanchild66
Agree with your main point.
But I think we need to adopt a different term than "school closures." Schools were not closed. In fact, in a lot of places, it was business as usual, with only minor steps taken. In many other places, schools transitioned to remote learning full- or part-time. Those measures lasted from a few weeks to as long as about a year, depending on the school, the state, etc. My son spent an ungodly number of hours doing schoolwork during the pandemic, and for him and his generation the idea that schools were closed is not the reality that a lot of people seem to think.
Excellent point. You are correct. The bird flu modeling was based on "school closures", but that was before we had the ability to avoid all-or-nothing. So in fact we should not say "school closure".
I also get really pissed when people say "lockdown" for what clearly was not remotely like "lockdown".
Once it became obvious that the vaccine would not prevent spread, the majority of people who had been doing the right thing decided to adopt the "lets pretend this is over" mentality, since there was no alternative. This apparently signaled to the people who had behaved like deranged children from Day 1 that they were somehow right the whole time, so now we get to endure crap like this interview. Cool!
"Once it became obvious that the vaccine would not prevent spread..."
Wait a second. That makes it sound like vaccines were worthless except to the person who was vaccinated. However:
1. Vaccines were highly effective in preventing exposed people from getting infected with Covid (less so with omicron)
2. Uninfected people could not spread the disease
3. Ergo, vaccines were very effective in lowering transmission of Covid
What studies have shown is that people who did get infected, even those who had been vaccinated (and with milder symptoms), shed the disease at about the same rate regardless of vaccination status.
This is an example of people not adjusting one's thinking to the ever-changing virus landscape.
What we've known since Omicron (the only variant relevant at the moment) is that vaccines only help prevent spread (not even close to 100%) for a few months, and then antibodies quickly fade and spread is mostly unhindered.
So given the reality that we now have a virus variant that simply can't be stopped from spreading, behavior that made sense with previous variants is a much harder sell. How do you convince the rational part of society to continue masking and locking down in perpetuity with no vaccine off ramp? Clearly you can't.
All we can do now is hope that Long Covid isn't as bad a many scientists are predicting.
Given the fact that people were largely giving up on masking and lockdowns all through 2020 and 2021, your theory doesnt seem to ring true.
It is definitely not true that people suddenly gave up on these things after several months of Omicron infections. These changes happened well before.
Maybe you misunderstood my point. Before the vaccine it was mostly Fox News types who were anti-mitigation.
But after it was realized that the initial vaccine was not a suit of armor against infection (this was realized even before Delta), it was just a matter of time before almost everyone gave up on mitigation. By Omicron it was pretty clear that the virus was unstoppable, which I think pushed even the epidemiologists to say screw it, pandemic over.
People didn't give up on mitigation because they saw vaccines as helpless against the spread of infection.
The vaccines enabled people to begin getting back to their normal lives because they were protected.
Vaccines did lower transmission, but critically, esp. in the case of Omicron, it also lowered the likelihood of an infection causing a hospitalization or death. Easier to resume regular life when the danger was more often symptoms of a cold or the flu.
For the folks who are oblivious to Long Covid (more than a few I'm sure) you're probably right... they started treating Covid like a cold after they were vaccinated. Unfortunately for the 20% or so (studies are all over the place) of infected young people who go on to develop possibly lifelong ailments ranging from annoying to debilitating, Covid wasn't just a cold.
For the people who are aware that Long Covid is a thing, then yes, it was vaccines no longer preventing infections that has impacted their view of mitigation.
I understand the point you are making, but I dont think its correct.
I think there is zero evidence that many people suddenly turned anti-mitigation when they realized that the vaccines did not guarantee protection from spreading the virus.
The actual vaccine uptake rates, TSA boarding info, restaurant bookings, in store retail sales and sporting events seem to provide pretty clear evidence that your narrative doesnt match what was actually happening....and certainly my own anecdotal evidence of friends, coworkers, family and neighbors doesnt seem to match up with this very well either.
When did it become obvious that the vaccine would not prevent spread? Kevin did an article back on December 17, 2021 showing a significant difference in mortality rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. As an example, the death rate for unvaccinated people age 50-64 was 270 per 100,000. Vaccinated people in the same age range had 10.4 deaths per 100,000 people. I'd say that's a pretty significant mortality reduction. From the local news, our hospitals here in NW WA are also seeing fewer and less severe cases of COVID infections, although cases continue to pop up.
You're conflating two different things: catching the virus versus dying from it.
When the first vaccine became available everyone believed it was a suit of armor to prevent even catching the virus. Sane people locked down and masked up to get to that finish line. With each subsequent variant it became obvious that was a pipe dream, and even though the vaccine dropped deaths dramatically, the reality that virus spread itself was unstoppable made other mitigation measures much harder to justify long term. So here we are.
When the first vaccine became available everyone believed it was a suit of armor to prevent even catching the virus.
A belief in sterilizing immunity may have been widespread among the general public. But it was far from universal. And no, public health authorities absolutely did not spin it as such. I was probably more obsessed than the average person in terms of pouring over the available information in 2020 (my life had well and truly been upended by the pandemic in that I was stranded far from home with no clear resolution in sight): the available reportage on clinical trials made it abundantly clear that, although there was hope the vaccines would prevent infections, their principal efficacy was in stopping severe symptoms, hospitalization, and death.
It's possible the CDC or some other authority was insufficiently forceful in communicating this necessary information, sure. But I doubt it: I'm increasingly inclined to think that the internet, smart phones, apps, etc—in other words the utter tsunami of sources of news and messaging we're exposed to—renders the idea of a highly centralized, highly effective, highly authoritative government messaging apparatus simply non-viable. There are a gazillion sources of information available 24/7, most of them cookied and targeted to fit our ideological priors, and nothing is going to change this. This is the case even in China, a state with robust government censorship.
I realize Gov. DeSantis is very busy in his epic battle with Mickey Mouse and his "I'm not a candidate" campaign for president. But still, I wonder why Florida has not reported any Covid deaths or new cases in more than a month. Does the government shut down when it's spring break?
Florida had been averaging a few dozen deaths per day, and then suddenly none.
There is too much arguing in comments here, and in general, about the meaning of studies on vaccination, masking etc. as relating to death rates. But we know what the countries which really have had lower death rates, specifically various countries in Asia, did to keep those rates down - they adopted pretty drastic measures including masking, isolation and tracing as well as vaccination. These things worked, although exactly what is critical is not so clear. Evidently it is taboo to bring up international comparisons in the politics of the pandemic.
To be fair, Sweden is brought up all the time isnt it?
IMO, Fauci was far too ready to concede the "age skew" point. Yes, the age skew is tremendous for DEATH from COVID, particularly for the vaccinated.
But immediate death from the acute phase is not the only bad outcome from COVID-19. There is Long COVID, of course, which the CDC nows say may effect up to 20% of people who've had COVID-19.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220622.htm
In addition, COVID-19 attacks the vascular system and organs is the most likely culprit (though not yet proven--but please suggest an alternate theory if you deny it) in continuing excess death rates that far exceed the current reported COVID death toll.
Your link led me to another CDC page that answers some of my questions I posted above:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm
And it’s up to date. But it still doesn’t sort out for vaccinated vs unvaccinated.
I note that 28%(!) of Covid cases have resulted in long and 11% of those currently have long Covid.
So I think I’ll continue wearing a mask in crowded situations.
These ~20%+ long covid estimations just blow me away. I must know at least 100 people who have had covid one or more times and don’t know anyone who has any long or even medium-term symptoms.
The other thing is I’m not sure what exactly “long Covid” means. My grand-nieces who are both under 10 got Covid and had symptoms for about 2 months after they no longer tested positive. They’re both fine now. I don’t know if that counts as long Covid.
I'm brown morbidly obese and pre-diabetic. It sure was a fucking threat to me. Also as I have said over and over by the time of Diamond Princess it was obvious it was airborne and anyone who didn't say it was likely to be airborne was flat out denying the science.
One measure of how CDC attracted undeserved blame is implicit in Kevin’s discussion, where he doesn’t clarify that Tony Fauci actually worked at NIH. Other than the dubious Dr. Birx CDC was mostly shut out of public messaging from the White House during TFG’s time
It seems that people forgot the "White House Coronavirus Task Force" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Coronavirus_Task_Force. As far as I call tell the main "task" of this Task Force was to stop the CDC from doing anything useful like speedy development of tests, because at that time Trump didn't want the public to know about the spread of Covid.
It is true that the science was updated as time passed.
But the real complaint by the people who are trying to make the system better (as opposed to scoring partisan points) is an insistence by "science" (more precisely medicine) of knowledge when none exists. We've been through 50 years of this and the medical establishment has learned FSCKALL from these 50 years.
"The COVID virus surprised scientists at nearly every turn. It spread asymptomatically. It was airborne. It mutated wildly. It was more transmissible than anyone expected."
So in other words the initial rounds of "advice" were NOT based on actual knowledge, they were based on guesses which may, or may not, have been shaded for whatever reason (caution, politics, personal idiosyncrasies, ...).
The CDC and similar establishments need to learn to say "I DO NOT KNOW". Saying "do X" when you have no real data as to whether X is correct is just burning your credibility.
Look, the rejection of the medical establishment by half the country did not come out of nowhere. It came about as the result of a 50 year pattern of being told this year that salt is bad, then next year that salt is good. This year that chocolate is good then next year that chocolate is bad. 30 years of cholesterol is bad, then 20 years of a vague "well some is good some is bad but god forbid we update the dietary guidelines to reflect that BOTH types have nothing to do with actually eating cholesterol". A food pyramid (or wheel? or rainbow?) that keeps changing but every year seems based ever more on fantasy than on actual science. etc etc
There are many things we simply do not know. Ask a physicist the weight of a neutrino and they'll say "I dunno, seems to be smaller than 1eV and greater than 0eV".
But medicine is pathologically incapable of saying "we do not know" when asked questions. THAT is what needs to be fixed. You cannot blame people for mistrusting what medicine says when they apply the same degree of confidence when talking about things we understand well (eg many aspects of cancer treatment) and things we understand poorly (much of macro nutrition, much of back pain, much of the issues around a new virus).
Or to put it in terms a lefty might understand: were you willing to trust the Bush government when they gave a constantly shifting set of rationales for attacking Iraq? Especially when those rationales one after another turned out to be false?
Well then, why are you so surprised that half the country is holding the CDC to that exact same standard?