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Quiet this Panic

In response to this letter of mine that appears in today’s Wall Street Journal, Phil Siegel e-mailed to me the following note. (In his e-mail he included the name of the consulting firm, but I’ve removed it so that that firm isn’t held accountable for Mr. Siegel’s views as shared here. I share his e-mail with his kind permission.)

Agree entirely; I’ve worked on response to this disease with many governments at [a large consulting] firm and when we had unvaccinated older/vulnerable people the health measures were one thing to save lives. But now forcing our kids to do the same measures for a disease LESS pathogenic to them than the seasonal flu is outrageous. Either we’re overreacting now or we have been derelict for decades not protecting kids against the flu by making them always mask in schools.

Well of course it’s the first. We send them to sleepaway camp where Lyme Disease is a much worse threat to their well being as well. We accept risks and make choices in life but in this case our risk assessment isn’t just off it’s become irrational. If we don’t want them to spread Covid wait to open schools until community levels are low and then let them be. And give small vaccine doses to asthmatic, obese and diabetic kids at the choice of parents. There shouldn’t be any more measures than that. This panic, by not understanding the risk, is literally a mass hysteria.

Phil