Very much agree. This has been a consistent problem in the response to CoVid. When data was coming out of Israel that the vaccines didn’t stop transmission, many other countries continued to claim that it did and authorized mandates on the basis of things that actual data said wouldn’t work.
Very much agree. This has been a consistent problem in the response to CoVid. When data was coming out of Israel that the vaccines didn’t stop transmission, many other countries continued to claim that it did and authorized mandates on the basis of things that actual data said wouldn’t work.
When people talked about how Sweden wasn’t seeing large deaths despite not locking down, people insisted that it wasn’t a good idea to follow them. Or that you can’t compare countries. That each country had to rely on its own data and that their data showed it was working.
Same thing with masks. People used individual circumstances to remain in support of requiring masks yet despite near universal masking, cases continued to rise. And they pushed the idea that just because other countries didn’t mandate them and weren’t doing any worse than places that did, doesn’t mean that masks didn’t work. Or that the reason was because whatever place didn’t mandate them had a “more compliant population” and that accounts for the similarities.
Exactly! As new data continued to emerge that directly challenged key elements of the narrative, I kept thinking surely THIS time vital information would be widely disseminated and robustly discussed---even if only to refute the findings with better data and arguments.
But new information was never even acknowledged, let alone refuted.
And what’s worse is even well established facts were ignored in favour of the narrative. Very early on I saw this article and yet it wasn’t acknowledged by mainstream politicians or media outlets. People just kept going with the narrative:
That too. Even I, with an interest in but no career in science or public health, knew before the Crud that public health policies had to be wholistic, balanced, and keenly aware of trade-offs. The "lockdown" scenario had been considered and studied prior to 2020, and the resounding conclusion was that 1) we simply cannot stop a wide-spread easily transmissible respiratory virus, and 2) any slowing down of the spread would be temporary at best, and absolutely unthinkable due to the severe consequences to all other areas of life, and 3) lock-downs would also have health consequences that would result in people dying.
For sure, there was even an updated plan by the World Health Organization in like September 2019 that said many of the things we implemented wouldn’t work. The advisory document said that once a virus entered a country, business closures and other measures were unlikely to have any beneficial effect and destructive consequences. The only actual remedy was to make sure that the virus never got in, and if it got out of the country of origin, the fight was basically lost.
My general view is that the only time a lockdown would’ve actually worked is by having a worldwide quarantine of China in like October 2019. Letting no one living in China at the time leave the country for however long it took to contain the virus within China. That’s the only viable way for a lockdown to have actually succeed. Once it was detected in other countries, it was over.
Very much agree. This has been a consistent problem in the response to CoVid. When data was coming out of Israel that the vaccines didn’t stop transmission, many other countries continued to claim that it did and authorized mandates on the basis of things that actual data said wouldn’t work.
When people talked about how Sweden wasn’t seeing large deaths despite not locking down, people insisted that it wasn’t a good idea to follow them. Or that you can’t compare countries. That each country had to rely on its own data and that their data showed it was working.
Same thing with masks. People used individual circumstances to remain in support of requiring masks yet despite near universal masking, cases continued to rise. And they pushed the idea that just because other countries didn’t mandate them and weren’t doing any worse than places that did, doesn’t mean that masks didn’t work. Or that the reason was because whatever place didn’t mandate them had a “more compliant population” and that accounts for the similarities.
Now we’re seeing the same thing with vaccines.
Exactly! As new data continued to emerge that directly challenged key elements of the narrative, I kept thinking surely THIS time vital information would be widely disseminated and robustly discussed---even if only to refute the findings with better data and arguments.
But new information was never even acknowledged, let alone refuted.
And what’s worse is even well established facts were ignored in favour of the narrative. Very early on I saw this article and yet it wasn’t acknowledged by mainstream politicians or media outlets. People just kept going with the narrative:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/health/coronavirus-plague-pandemic-history.html
Not to mention we basically threw out 100 years of knowledge about coronaviruses and other infectious diseases and started from scratch.
That too. Even I, with an interest in but no career in science or public health, knew before the Crud that public health policies had to be wholistic, balanced, and keenly aware of trade-offs. The "lockdown" scenario had been considered and studied prior to 2020, and the resounding conclusion was that 1) we simply cannot stop a wide-spread easily transmissible respiratory virus, and 2) any slowing down of the spread would be temporary at best, and absolutely unthinkable due to the severe consequences to all other areas of life, and 3) lock-downs would also have health consequences that would result in people dying.
For sure, there was even an updated plan by the World Health Organization in like September 2019 that said many of the things we implemented wouldn’t work. The advisory document said that once a virus entered a country, business closures and other measures were unlikely to have any beneficial effect and destructive consequences. The only actual remedy was to make sure that the virus never got in, and if it got out of the country of origin, the fight was basically lost.
My general view is that the only time a lockdown would’ve actually worked is by having a worldwide quarantine of China in like October 2019. Letting no one living in China at the time leave the country for however long it took to contain the virus within China. That’s the only viable way for a lockdown to have actually succeed. Once it was detected in other countries, it was over.