The experience of Asian-Pacific countries clearly shows that a combination of diverse measures, most notably travel restrictions, quarantines of travellers and very fast and stringent contact tracing and quarantining kept COVID close to zero before the Omicron strains. Also, it's pretty clear that measures work best when they are implemented early, before large scale spread. The bests types of mask (FFP3 where I live) work demonstrably (that is, in lab experiments), and they work in my real life experience when worn correctly and disposed of correctly. The problem with the response outside Asia-Pacific was its inconsistency. Germany did a pretty good job getting the incidence close to zero (and mortality below normal thanks to the reduction of other life risks via the same measures) in the spring of 2020, then threw all of the expensive effort away by allowing travel in the summer holidays, with lots of immigrants from the Balkans spending the summer in their homes countries where the epidemic was raging completely unchecked, and allowing free border traffic with Czechia when things spiralled out of control there. Without free travel, Germany could have held COVID at bay until the elderly were vaccinated. Free travel and epidemic control do not go together with a highly contagious respiratory virus, that much we know.
Excess Mortality - or Lack Thereof - Prior to Covid Response:
This 2020 blog post assembled mortality data and lockdown dates from public sources.
1) Mortality Increase starts after, not before, lockdowns
2) Subsequent studies suggest SARS-COV-2 circulated in some of these countries starting in August 2019, but not earlier.
Were aspects of the Covid response - not so much the virus itself - responsible for the bulk of excess mortality? Did restructuring society alter our viral ecosystem to favor a new virus?
Covid started circulating in mid February…so the Miami Super Bowl on 2/2 didn’t produce a super spreader event but Carnival in New Orleans (two weeks before 2/25) and just NYC in general did produce super spreader events. So Republican governor DeWitt started the official Covid response on 3/12.
While all true, and completely shameful ... to me, the even bigger failure is the complete lack of preparation. What else were all of these people doing in the years before COVID if not preparing for the inevitable arrival of something like COVID? How could we not know what to do in the face of a pandemic? It was THEIR JOB to be "the science" and know the best course of action ... not to flail around guessing, regardless of how scary it might have seemed at the time. For that, they should never be forgiven.
"Few models showed that COVID policies— closing schools, banning gatherings, shelter in place— helped. A few showed that they did not SPREAD COVID. But the VAST, VAST majority showed no significant effect on transmission. They didn’t work."
what I dont understand about findings like this is - clearly, lockdowns did work in some sense because they massively distorted the usual transmission patterns of typical respiratory diseases - flu collapsed, RSV, etc, this was clearly observed in normal patterns. So what explains this? yes covid was more transmissible, but not that more transmissible.
The real question was whether the trade off was worth it, which is more challenging to prove. Certainly I think closing schools was a mistake.
Studies with aggregated data are too crude a tool to measure effects, also, the data are full of unmeasured confounding variables and ecological and other fallacies.
Correct, we can do cost-benefit analysis now. I think states like North Carolina achieved the best balance with respect to NPIs and keeping the economy strong. I think the counties that achieved the best balance with respect to vaccines were the few wealthy Republican counties in the southeast that got the older people vaccinated quickly and then returned to normalcy quickly. The worst counties and states with respect to saving lives were the low educated Republican counties that quit NPIs quickly and refused to get vaccinated and believed Covid was a hoax. The worst counties with respect to the economy were the liberal ones that continued NPIs into 2022 even when they had a vaccine that clearly reduced severity and they had high vaccination rates.
Sweden was mentioned (I can’t find it here now though), as having few policies but good results. Sweden relied on an educated population conscious and capable of doing the right things.
“To Jul 13, 2022. Deaths PER MILLION, Sweden was 1,849; the U.S., 3,099; Portugal, 2,363, with the highest vaccination rate in Europe (272 doses per 200 people); Australia, 406.51 deaths per million, with state lock downs, no entry, no leaving.
“The main difference between Sweden’s strategy and other countries was that it relied on voluntary adaptation rather than government edicts.” “In the absence of strict government control, Swedes adapted their behavior voluntarily.”
“Sweden’s strategy, under a government coalition of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, mostly relied on voluntary adaptation.” “The government recommended that Swedes engage in social distancing, work remotely, avoid nonessential travel, and stay indoors if they felt sick, though it did not force them to.” “The Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said: “We will not be able to legislate about everything. We will not be able to ban all harmful behavior. It is more a matter of common sense. There is an individual responsibility, and every individual has to take responsibility for themselves, for their fellow people and their country.”
“This does not mean that there were no restrictions in Sweden—the most restrictive was that public gathering and events were limited to 50 participants in March 2020–including theater, cinema, concerts, lectures, religious meetings, demonstrations, sporting events, and amusement parks, but not workplaces, shopping centers, and private gatherings. In November 2020 this limit was reduced to 8 people, then gradually lifted starting in May 2021 until it was fully removed in September 2021.”
“In April 2020 the government in Sweden banned private visits to elderly care homes. Bars and restaurants were ordered to offer table service only and the space between tables had to be increased. In November 2020, alcohol sales after 10 p.m. were banned, and by the end of the year, the deadline was advanced to 8 p.m. This rule was terminated in June 2021.
The Public Health Agency of Sweden recommended that secondary schools and universities switch to distance education between March and June 2020, and again in December 2020 until early January 2021, but preschools and elementary schools stayed open throughout that time.
“Most countries, including Sweden’s neighbors Norway, Denmark, and Finland, closed national borders. Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell rejected border closures reasoning the virus is already within a country that considers border closures, and restrictions would hurt the economy. When the European Union closed its borders to non‐Europeans in March 2020, Sweden complied.”
“Until January 2021 there were no mask mandates. January 2021 masks were recommended on public transportation during rush hours, weekdays 7–9 a.m. and 4–6 p.m.”
“For decades the World Health Organization had been planning for a pandemic, with a focus on protecting the most vulnerable, while trying to keep society as a whole up and running. What set Sweden apart was that it stuck to that plan.”
“Social distancing comes naturally to introverted Swedes, so we don’t have to be compelled to engage in it. A joke that made the rounds, “Finally no more 2‑meter rule, now Swedes can go back to the usual 5‑meter distance.”
With respect to America if a population avoided the initial wave then % below poverty level is the most important factor for a population’s Covid death rate. The Nordic countries have very low poverty levels while America has high poverty levels. Most of America’s problems probably correlate to poverty level btw. So a wealthy population in America will have low gun violence even with high gun ownership rates. Vermont is a rural state with an old population and a high percentage of gun ownership…and yet it has few problems because of its low poverty level and it has a very low Covid death rate.
And I will add that age is a much bigger factor on the low end and so a country with high poverty level but a median age of closer to 20 like Haiti won’t necessarily have a high Covid death rate.
Literally everyone failed in one way or another. WHO refused to admit it might be airborne until it was blindingly obvious. Everyone using flawed 50 yr old data on droplet transmission. Pretty much every government screwing up management, save those who had experienced SARS.
In all honesty - this was a universal screw up. The only thing we can do is learn from it before the next one.
"School closure was a complete fiasco because while it didn’t slow viral spread (or did so only marginally—we have several papers supporting this conclusion); it robbed a generation of kids of several grade levels— a devastating blow that will shorten their lives. We wrote about this years ago."
Important decisions should rarely if ever be made based on expertise in only a single field. If it's a product decision in business, you're going to want the differing expertise sets of your sales people, your manufacturing people, and your finance people. In a public health crisis, you don't just hand the decision off to the epidemiologists and virologists, you also need people who will advise on educational effects and economic effects.
Arizona has the highest Covid death rate because it was the largest state with the fewest mitigation measures in 2020. Hawaii has the lowest Covid death rate because it implemented the most mitigation measures throughout the pandemic.
We never found a “silver bullet” to stop Covid but masking worked to some degree and lockdowns worked to slow the spread and obviously the vaccines mitigated severity. DeSantis chose to take the off-ramp a few months too early and the Southeast experienced a mostly preventable Delta death surge that other states managed to avoid. Bottom line—DeSantis killed more Americans than Osama Bin Laden!
Yea, I don't understand why they don't see slowing the spread as a measure to help hospitals that were already over crowded and over worked. Also a lot of sources are missing for some of these claims.
They don’t want to see it…at the end of the day people started following narratives and became invested in those narratives. I actually kept an open mind and so I got vaxxed and boosted but kept following Berenson. Berenson would go on the Clay and Buck radio show and you could literally hear all of them sweating through the radio as the Delta variant surged through the southeast killing people because Berenson was a leader in the movement that said nothing would stop Covid and it wasn’t really a big deal and so everyone should get on with their lives…and so the southeast had an entirely preventable COVID wave in which median age of death actually declined!!
I think it's more than hubris. Fauci is much more of a politician than a scientist. That's basically why he flip flopped on almost every single major issue of the pandemic. He doesn't care what the right answer is, he only cares about being on the winning side.
I love that you read and reply to the comments on your article. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I’m from the Bay Area but have been living in Auckland for the past 8 years. If you think the US policies were bad, be grateful you weren’t in NZ during the pandemic. Total locked down mandated hell for months. Everything was closed except the grocery stores, the banks and medical facilities. You weren’t even allowed to shop online. They told people to spy on their neighbours. Eventually businesses opened again but only the vaccinated were allowed to get a haircut or eat at a restaurant. Draconian. And still many kiwis brag about how lives we saved.
And here in the U.S. we welcomed and rewarded Jacinda Adern with visiting fellowship accolades at our (formerly) most venerable institution of Harvard University. For the woman with the horsey grin who gleefully declared and approved a two tier society: the Vaccinated and the Unvaccinated. The headline read: "Jacinda Ardern has a lot to be proud of as former prime minister of New Zealand...."
I think you have been too kind in your assessment of Dr. Fauci. I have been watching the congressional hearings and it's crystal clear that he knowingly lied and benefitted financially from those lies. What he has done cannot be reversed. We are all paying dearly for his actions and he should be held accountable. sabrinalabow.substack.com
You are right, I hope that it was a slip of the pen. Though notice that Bergamo is (and was in 2019) very much an inverted pyramid, it is just that the bulge is in the 50s. Though that is still significantly higher than the US median age of less than 40.
In America age is a factor much more on the low end than high end. So all things being equal % below poverty level is the most influential factor at the population level for Covid death rate in America. That’s why the notion we could have picked an age and protected those over that age is a false notion because age isn’t the most important factor in America for Covid death rate.
Just look at the data! Native American populations have the highest poverty level and the reservations were hit very hard in 2020. Obviously the initial wave prior to mitigation measures hit wealthy Americans but once that was over wealthy Americans could arrange their lives easier to avoid the virus…and then they cut in line to get vaccinated. So the inflation that persists is from the excess savings from Trump Tax Cuts and Zooming during lockdowns showing up as shelter inflation.
Fauci has proved himself to be neither a scientist nor a humanitarian. He is a bureaucrat who hasn’t seen the inside of a lab in decades. His goal has always been the accumulation of personal wealth.
Did you read RFK’s book?? The most pages are dedicated to Fauci and HIV pushing AZT causing AIDS!! The AIDS crisis ended in the late 1990s because the meds worked! But RFK is so invested in his conspiracy theory that he still pushes it! 😝
The experience of Asian-Pacific countries clearly shows that a combination of diverse measures, most notably travel restrictions, quarantines of travellers and very fast and stringent contact tracing and quarantining kept COVID close to zero before the Omicron strains. Also, it's pretty clear that measures work best when they are implemented early, before large scale spread. The bests types of mask (FFP3 where I live) work demonstrably (that is, in lab experiments), and they work in my real life experience when worn correctly and disposed of correctly. The problem with the response outside Asia-Pacific was its inconsistency. Germany did a pretty good job getting the incidence close to zero (and mortality below normal thanks to the reduction of other life risks via the same measures) in the spring of 2020, then threw all of the expensive effort away by allowing travel in the summer holidays, with lots of immigrants from the Balkans spending the summer in their homes countries where the epidemic was raging completely unchecked, and allowing free border traffic with Czechia when things spiralled out of control there. Without free travel, Germany could have held COVID at bay until the elderly were vaccinated. Free travel and epidemic control do not go together with a highly contagious respiratory virus, that much we know.
Excess Mortality - or Lack Thereof - Prior to Covid Response:
This 2020 blog post assembled mortality data and lockdown dates from public sources.
1) Mortality Increase starts after, not before, lockdowns
2) Subsequent studies suggest SARS-COV-2 circulated in some of these countries starting in August 2019, but not earlier.
Were aspects of the Covid response - not so much the virus itself - responsible for the bulk of excess mortality? Did restructuring society alter our viral ecosystem to favor a new virus?
May 2020 Blog;
https://medium.com/@JohnPospichal/questions-for-lockdown-apologists-32a9bbf2e247
Covid started circulating in mid February…so the Miami Super Bowl on 2/2 didn’t produce a super spreader event but Carnival in New Orleans (two weeks before 2/25) and just NYC in general did produce super spreader events. So Republican governor DeWitt started the official Covid response on 3/12.
Could shutdowns have actually been counterproductive?
Some research suggests that adults around young children and adults with antibodies to benign endemic Corinaviruses were largely protected from Covid.
Closing Schools and isolating people may have allowed this immunity to wane.
Dec 2022 Article:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/interacting-with-small-kids-may-lower-risk-of-severe-covid-outcomes.html
While all true, and completely shameful ... to me, the even bigger failure is the complete lack of preparation. What else were all of these people doing in the years before COVID if not preparing for the inevitable arrival of something like COVID? How could we not know what to do in the face of a pandemic? It was THEIR JOB to be "the science" and know the best course of action ... not to flail around guessing, regardless of how scary it might have seemed at the time. For that, they should never be forgiven.
"Few models showed that COVID policies— closing schools, banning gatherings, shelter in place— helped. A few showed that they did not SPREAD COVID. But the VAST, VAST majority showed no significant effect on transmission. They didn’t work."
what I dont understand about findings like this is - clearly, lockdowns did work in some sense because they massively distorted the usual transmission patterns of typical respiratory diseases - flu collapsed, RSV, etc, this was clearly observed in normal patterns. So what explains this? yes covid was more transmissible, but not that more transmissible.
The real question was whether the trade off was worth it, which is more challenging to prove. Certainly I think closing schools was a mistake.
Studies with aggregated data are too crude a tool to measure effects, also, the data are full of unmeasured confounding variables and ecological and other fallacies.
Correct, we can do cost-benefit analysis now. I think states like North Carolina achieved the best balance with respect to NPIs and keeping the economy strong. I think the counties that achieved the best balance with respect to vaccines were the few wealthy Republican counties in the southeast that got the older people vaccinated quickly and then returned to normalcy quickly. The worst counties and states with respect to saving lives were the low educated Republican counties that quit NPIs quickly and refused to get vaccinated and believed Covid was a hoax. The worst counties with respect to the economy were the liberal ones that continued NPIs into 2022 even when they had a vaccine that clearly reduced severity and they had high vaccination rates.
(an intervention for which we now have randomized data showing it doesn’t work) sources?
Sweden was mentioned (I can’t find it here now though), as having few policies but good results. Sweden relied on an educated population conscious and capable of doing the right things.
“To Jul 13, 2022. Deaths PER MILLION, Sweden was 1,849; the U.S., 3,099; Portugal, 2,363, with the highest vaccination rate in Europe (272 doses per 200 people); Australia, 406.51 deaths per million, with state lock downs, no entry, no leaving.
“The main difference between Sweden’s strategy and other countries was that it relied on voluntary adaptation rather than government edicts.” “In the absence of strict government control, Swedes adapted their behavior voluntarily.”
“Sweden’s strategy, under a government coalition of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, mostly relied on voluntary adaptation.” “The government recommended that Swedes engage in social distancing, work remotely, avoid nonessential travel, and stay indoors if they felt sick, though it did not force them to.” “The Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said: “We will not be able to legislate about everything. We will not be able to ban all harmful behavior. It is more a matter of common sense. There is an individual responsibility, and every individual has to take responsibility for themselves, for their fellow people and their country.”
“This does not mean that there were no restrictions in Sweden—the most restrictive was that public gathering and events were limited to 50 participants in March 2020–including theater, cinema, concerts, lectures, religious meetings, demonstrations, sporting events, and amusement parks, but not workplaces, shopping centers, and private gatherings. In November 2020 this limit was reduced to 8 people, then gradually lifted starting in May 2021 until it was fully removed in September 2021.”
“In April 2020 the government in Sweden banned private visits to elderly care homes. Bars and restaurants were ordered to offer table service only and the space between tables had to be increased. In November 2020, alcohol sales after 10 p.m. were banned, and by the end of the year, the deadline was advanced to 8 p.m. This rule was terminated in June 2021.
The Public Health Agency of Sweden recommended that secondary schools and universities switch to distance education between March and June 2020, and again in December 2020 until early January 2021, but preschools and elementary schools stayed open throughout that time.
“Most countries, including Sweden’s neighbors Norway, Denmark, and Finland, closed national borders. Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell rejected border closures reasoning the virus is already within a country that considers border closures, and restrictions would hurt the economy. When the European Union closed its borders to non‐Europeans in March 2020, Sweden complied.”
“Until January 2021 there were no mask mandates. January 2021 masks were recommended on public transportation during rush hours, weekdays 7–9 a.m. and 4–6 p.m.”
“For decades the World Health Organization had been planning for a pandemic, with a focus on protecting the most vulnerable, while trying to keep society as a whole up and running. What set Sweden apart was that it stuck to that plan.”
“Social distancing comes naturally to introverted Swedes, so we don’t have to be compelled to engage in it. A joke that made the rounds, “Finally no more 2‑meter rule, now Swedes can go back to the usual 5‑meter distance.”
With respect to America if a population avoided the initial wave then % below poverty level is the most important factor for a population’s Covid death rate. The Nordic countries have very low poverty levels while America has high poverty levels. Most of America’s problems probably correlate to poverty level btw. So a wealthy population in America will have low gun violence even with high gun ownership rates. Vermont is a rural state with an old population and a high percentage of gun ownership…and yet it has few problems because of its low poverty level and it has a very low Covid death rate.
And I will add that age is a much bigger factor on the low end and so a country with high poverty level but a median age of closer to 20 like Haiti won’t necessarily have a high Covid death rate.
Literally everyone failed in one way or another. WHO refused to admit it might be airborne until it was blindingly obvious. Everyone using flawed 50 yr old data on droplet transmission. Pretty much every government screwing up management, save those who had experienced SARS.
In all honesty - this was a universal screw up. The only thing we can do is learn from it before the next one.
"School closure was a complete fiasco because while it didn’t slow viral spread (or did so only marginally—we have several papers supporting this conclusion); it robbed a generation of kids of several grade levels— a devastating blow that will shorten their lives. We wrote about this years ago."
Important decisions should rarely if ever be made based on expertise in only a single field. If it's a product decision in business, you're going to want the differing expertise sets of your sales people, your manufacturing people, and your finance people. In a public health crisis, you don't just hand the decision off to the epidemiologists and virologists, you also need people who will advise on educational effects and economic effects.
Arizona has the highest Covid death rate because it was the largest state with the fewest mitigation measures in 2020. Hawaii has the lowest Covid death rate because it implemented the most mitigation measures throughout the pandemic.
We never found a “silver bullet” to stop Covid but masking worked to some degree and lockdowns worked to slow the spread and obviously the vaccines mitigated severity. DeSantis chose to take the off-ramp a few months too early and the Southeast experienced a mostly preventable Delta death surge that other states managed to avoid. Bottom line—DeSantis killed more Americans than Osama Bin Laden!
Yea, I don't understand why they don't see slowing the spread as a measure to help hospitals that were already over crowded and over worked. Also a lot of sources are missing for some of these claims.
They don’t want to see it…at the end of the day people started following narratives and became invested in those narratives. I actually kept an open mind and so I got vaxxed and boosted but kept following Berenson. Berenson would go on the Clay and Buck radio show and you could literally hear all of them sweating through the radio as the Delta variant surged through the southeast killing people because Berenson was a leader in the movement that said nothing would stop Covid and it wasn’t really a big deal and so everyone should get on with their lives…and so the southeast had an entirely preventable COVID wave in which median age of death actually declined!!
Great discussion. If you are interested in getting to the paper and an app to explore the findings, check out: https://www.chiragjpgroup.org/posts/oped.html
Hubris. One quality you never want to see in a doctor. There should be a picture of Fauci next to this word in the dictionary.
I think it's more than hubris. Fauci is much more of a politician than a scientist. That's basically why he flip flopped on almost every single major issue of the pandemic. He doesn't care what the right answer is, he only cares about being on the winning side.
I love that you read and reply to the comments on your article. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I’m from the Bay Area but have been living in Auckland for the past 8 years. If you think the US policies were bad, be grateful you weren’t in NZ during the pandemic. Total locked down mandated hell for months. Everything was closed except the grocery stores, the banks and medical facilities. You weren’t even allowed to shop online. They told people to spy on their neighbours. Eventually businesses opened again but only the vaccinated were allowed to get a haircut or eat at a restaurant. Draconian. And still many kiwis brag about how lives we saved.
And here in the U.S. we welcomed and rewarded Jacinda Adern with visiting fellowship accolades at our (formerly) most venerable institution of Harvard University. For the woman with the horsey grin who gleefully declared and approved a two tier society: the Vaccinated and the Unvaccinated. The headline read: "Jacinda Ardern has a lot to be proud of as former prime minister of New Zealand...."
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/public-leadership-management/jacinda-ardern-has-lot-be-proud-former
Only the Chinese could develop a bioweapon that wasn’t dangerous but could induce others to go crazy and develop dangerous vaccines…diabolical!
I think you have been too kind in your assessment of Dr. Fauci. I have been watching the congressional hearings and it's crystal clear that he knowingly lied and benefitted financially from those lies. What he has done cannot be reversed. We are all paying dearly for his actions and he should be held accountable. sabrinalabow.substack.com
This site suggests the median age in Bergamo is closer to 60 than 80. Please cite your source for the claim of a median age in 80s. https://www.citypopulation.de/en/italy/lombardia/bergamo/016024__bergamo/
You are right, I hope that it was a slip of the pen. Though notice that Bergamo is (and was in 2019) very much an inverted pyramid, it is just that the bulge is in the 50s. Though that is still significantly higher than the US median age of less than 40.
https://esploradati.censimentopopolazione.istat.it/databrowser/#/it/censtest/dashboards
In America age is a factor much more on the low end than high end. So all things being equal % below poverty level is the most influential factor at the population level for Covid death rate in America. That’s why the notion we could have picked an age and protected those over that age is a false notion because age isn’t the most important factor in America for Covid death rate.
That is possible. Source please.
Just look at the data! Native American populations have the highest poverty level and the reservations were hit very hard in 2020. Obviously the initial wave prior to mitigation measures hit wealthy Americans but once that was over wealthy Americans could arrange their lives easier to avoid the virus…and then they cut in line to get vaccinated. So the inflation that persists is from the excess savings from Trump Tax Cuts and Zooming during lockdowns showing up as shelter inflation.
And savings, during Trump, from axing pandemic planning budgets and staffing, down to zero, when Trump entered office 2016, before covid 2020.
Fauci has proved himself to be neither a scientist nor a humanitarian. He is a bureaucrat who hasn’t seen the inside of a lab in decades. His goal has always been the accumulation of personal wealth.
the late Kary Mullins (nobel prize winner for developing the PCR test) had a few choice words about the scientific acumen of fauci...
Did you read RFK’s book?? The most pages are dedicated to Fauci and HIV pushing AZT causing AIDS!! The AIDS crisis ended in the late 1990s because the meds worked! But RFK is so invested in his conspiracy theory that he still pushes it! 😝