While I've lately defended Anthony Fauci against some false accusations and conspiracy theories, I will be the first to tell you -- and I have, many times -- that the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic was astonishingly inept. However, I remind you of who was president at the time, and that it was people he appointed -- CDC Director Robert Redfield and Covid-19 response coordinator Deborah Birx, who, along with the president -- that's right, the guy who the people making false accusations against Anthony Fauci worship -- made public policy and shaped communication with the public. Anthony Fauci was director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, a research organization with no public policy responsibilities whatsoever.
Here's Zynep Tufecki in the NYT reviewing some of the mistakes. I might spin some of this a bit differently than she does -- she doesn't seem to want to put the blame in the right place and in fact, for some perverse reason she puts Fauci in the spotlight when very little of this had anything to do with him. She also omits some of the more egregious screwups, such as distributing defective test kits early on because the CDC (again, not Dr. Fauci, who had nothing to do with the CDC) refused to use kits of foreign manufacture. She also doesn't acknowledge that many of the mistakes cut in the opposite direction of what many people like to believe.
Let me briefly review this sad tale and see if we can't learn some lessons. First -- and I remember this well -- the authorities, taking their lead from the World Health Organization, initially insisted that the virus was transmitted by droplets -- i.e., relatively large particles that would not float in the air but rather fell onto surfaces. The public was told that the way to avoid transmission was frequent hand washing, not touching your eyes, mouth or nose, sanitizing surfaces. People were wiping down their groceries and wearing gloves to pump gas, that sort of thing.
For some reason I still don't understand, it took at least a couple of months for the WHO and CDC to acknowledge that the virus was transmitted through the air, through aerosolized microdroplets. Why they resisted this conclusion for so long is mysterious -- other coronaviruses are transmitted in that way. At the same time, the initial guidance was against mask wearing. (It actually would have been useful in either case.) Apparently this was because CDC (again, not Dr. Fauci who had no relevant responsibility) was afraid there weren't enough masks available for health care workers. However, lying to the public is not the right way to manage the problem.
Now, there are additional corrections that we can make in hindsight. It turns out that transmissibility is very low in outdoor settings, unless they are very crowded. Shutting down beaches and parks, and even small scale sporting events, was not necessary. But people didn't know that at the time. Also, good ventilation of indoor spaces is much more important than having people keep their distance. There was no real evidence for the six feet apart thing, it was basically arbitrary. There is also a very good case that shutting down schools and going to remote learning resulted in far too high a cost for little benefit. Children are not very susceptible to the virus and, given good ventilation and not too much crowding, schools could have stayed open with little added risk to the public. On the other hand, the losses in learning that resulted from school closures are very regrettable.
On the other hand, mask wearing indoors is effective at reducing transmission. The mistake was initially saying that it wasn't. The people who opposed mask mandates or refused to obey them were indeed putting the public at risk. And yes, crowded indoor gatherings including church services were indeed dangerous and in fact the primary drivers of the pandemic. An early outbreak came from a biotechnology conference in Boston. A church choir that insisted on practicing indoors, without masks, suffered an outbreak. Trump sycophant Herman Cain died of Covid that he evidently contracted at a Trump rally.
Also, too, the vaccines are highly effective (not 100%) and safe. Bill Gates doesn't put microchips in them and they don't make your testicles swell. There are some rare side effects, seldom serious, and much less risky than actually contracting the virus without being vaccinated. Yes, it's possible to become infected if you're vaccinated but your risk of severe illness is much less, as is your likelihood of infecting others. It doesn't have to be 100% effective to be well worth doing. I don't know why some people don't understand this. What is absolutely not effective, as has been proven beyond any doubt by large scale, well conducted clinical trials, is ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine -- not to mention injecting bleach. Now who is it, exactly, who lied to the public about that.
Anyway, I hope we've learned from this, and that when (not if) we face a future pandemic, we won't repeat the mistakes of the Trump administration.
Update: As I have said many times, all we can do about the lab leak hypothesis is keep an open mind. As PZ tells us, with links and evidence, the consensus of experts around the world is still that the virus emerged naturally. People who maintain this position aren't covering anything up, and they aren't suppressing dissent. They're just saying what they believe, based on evidence.
2 comments:
Lots of good information. Your correct assertion that young people seemed largely impervious to serious illness from Covid seems to completely ignore the fact that it put every teacher, teaching assistant and school staff member, along with people in administration, at risk of serious illness and even death. This was no small risk, and the children couldn't teach themselves. So I don't see that, at least initially, there was any way around shutting down the schools. I was teaching in public schools at the time as an assistant, and I can tell you that, as a man in my 50s, there was no way in hell I was gonna go to work if I had had to.
That's certainly understandable. The question is whether it is true that teachers and school administrators would have been at high risk. They are normally the only adult, or one of two or so adults in the room at one time, and children pose a low risk of transmission. However, in your case, special education would be a different matter, since many of the children are more vulnerable and there are likely multiple adults in the room together. As I meant to suggest, it's not a sin that people reacted with caution by closing schools, it's just that in hindsight, there's an argument that it was something of an overreaction. One can think of several measures to mitigate risk, short of closing schools entirely, that might have represented a better cost-benefit balance. Again, however, this is only possible to say in hindsight.
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