Vinay Prasad wonders why so many academics “went silent” in the face of Covid lockdowns. A slice:
India faced some of the longest closures, mortgaging the future of tens of millions of kids, leading to catastrophic educational losses.
School closures in the USA were disproportionately in liberal strongholds and attitudes were temporaly linked to Trump’s advocacy. Closing school for more than a year is the greatest domestic policy failure of the last 25 years. As a lifelong Democrat/ progressive, I know with confidence that my team is responsible for this.
Yet, throughout this pandemic, notice how many global health scholars were totally silent on lockdowns. How many global health researchers said nothing as India sacrificed the future of a generation with school closures? How many US based disparity researchers or early childhood advocates were silent on school closure? I believe most were quiet!
Why?
The answer is simple: they are more committed to their career than they are to the cause. It is a professional liability to take a strong stand on a controversial issue. It can lead to professional repercussions. Being silent is safe. At the same time, the single most consequential decision of one’s lifetime was taking place on topics these people supposed care about, but they were silent. Instead, the continued their, by perspective, trivial work.
… Karen Vaites makes a reasonable point: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
I would like to know if the people who are fearful of their kids’ risk from COVID have stopped taking them in cars and buses.
David Waugh points out that what changed is the politics, not the science. A slice:
In addition to Fauci and Collins, the CDC consistently demonstrates it is influenced by partisan politics. Throughout the pandemic, the CDC spread misinformation on masking, spun medical studies, disparaged natural immunity, allowed teachers’ unions to influence its school reopening guidance, and used deeply flawed studies to push an unconstitutional eviction moratorium. Trust in the CDC is dropping because Americans see it as a politicized agency.
Karol Markowicz wants apologies from officials who recklessly imposed lockdowns and other mindless Covid mandates. Two slices:
As COVID restrictions end around the country, and Democratic politicians pretend that something about the science has changed instead of their poll numbers being in the dirt, Americans must first demand: apologies.
Here, I’ll even go first. I spent much of 2020 and 2021 writing again and again arguing for the opening of schools throughout the country. But in March 2020, I was one of the leading voices urging schools to close.
It made no sense to me that my husband had stopped going into the office because of the mysterious new virus but my children continued to go to school. People were dying in large numbers in Italy and I was afraid.
I never imagined that “two weeks to slow the spread” would turn into two years, and counting, of pausing the lives of children to accommodate hypochondriac adults.
I was wrong. I’m sorry.
…..
Dr. Anthony Fauci, you fell in love with your own image and could not stay off the TV even as it caused us all harm.
In November 2021, you said that people who were criticizing you were “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” What’s dangerous is if you really believe that.
You frequently got things wrong on TV or reversed your previous comments with no explanations. The science hadn’t changed, you made political calculations to support the diktats of the Biden administration.
You actually argued for the passage of the stimulus bill as if you were some kind of lobbyist and not the director of one of our national health agencies.
Worst of all, you shut down dissenting opinions from other scientists because you knew yours could not withstand scrutiny. You have been a disaster for this country in leading us through the pandemic.
Apologize. Then exit stage left and let us never hear from you again.
You fearful, quiet politicians who let extended lockdowns destroy businesses, fray the fabric of our cities and cost us all so much: We saw you maskless, at concerts and parties, while our 2-year-olds stay masked to this day.
We know that you didn’t actually think masking was important like you implored us it was. You loved your power and nothing else mattered. Apologize.
And, you, compliant media, the disaster of the last two years is at your feet. You created heroes out of people like Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose nursing-home directive cost thousands of lives, while demonizing Gov. Ron DeSantis, who used all of his political capital to correctly force schools open, a decision everyone now pretends was easy but certainly was not.
You ran stories about high case numbers in Florida “as schools open” to project that schools were somehow unsafe. You were incurious and did not ever challenge the corrupt healthcare agencies. You let us down.
el gato malo wisely warns of the dangers posed by “complicity theorists.” A slice:
such people provide the backbone of domination by demagogue by uncritically accepting, absorbing, and parroting the party line du jour and weaving it into their identities and personae to curry status and signal virtue.
Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel – hardly herself a rabid anti-masker – rightly ridicules a New York Times theater critic for the latter’s continuing intense fear of Covid. Here’s her conclusion:
Reading the list of plays ruined by maskless Londoners reminded me of aspects of cosmopolitan American culture I don’t envy: a persnickety need to see everything in a political light, to see all unknowns as massive, panic-inducing existential health risks, and a terror of contagion. Growing up in Massachusetts, my friends were all brought up awash in antibacterial soap.
In fact, the horrified Ms Collins-Hughes might have drawn different conclusions: a society as slapdash about masks as ours is surely bound to have good immunity; actors must feel safe or they wouldn’t work, and so on. Above all, she might have relaxed. Yes, masks have a role in reducing Covid risk, but at this point in the pandemic it is a fairly manageable risk – and it is one that we can finally afford, by and large, to take.
