Tapate50
Well-known member
He should but he won't .
Should probably flip the page and move on and forward. If he prosecutes Fauci somehow, I'll be satisfied.
The Coronavirus, not the beer
- Thread starter Runnin
- Start date
He should but he won't .
Should probably flip the page and move on and forward. If he prosecutes Fauci somehow, I'll be satisfied.
Tapate50
Well-known member
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/11/covid-coronavirus-pandemic-response/
The worst public health crisis in 100 years became arguably the worst public policy failure in U.S. history because of social pathologies that the pathogen triggered. The coronavirus pandemic is over. What it revealed lingers: intellectual malpractice and authoritarian impulses infecting governmental, scientific, academic and media institutions.
This is unsparingly documented by two Princeton social scientists, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, in “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.” The most comprehensive and aggressive mobilization of emergency powers in U.S. history, wielded with scant regard for collateral consequences, exacerbated inequalities, included “extraordinary restrictions on free speech” and constituted a “stress test” that “the central truth-seeking departments of liberal democracy: journalism, science, and universities” frequently flunked. Macedo and Lee say the “moralization of disagreements” stifled dissent, employing censorship and shaming.
Incantations to “follow the science” obscured this: Science cannot “tell us what to do” because gargantuan government interventions in society involve contestable judgments across the range of human values. And large uncertainties, requiring difficult choices demanding cost-benefit analyses that were neglected during the pandemic.
The authors, self-described as “on the progressive side,” detail how “the class biases of pandemic restrictions” — favored the “laptop class” of knowledge workers and others able to work remotely. “Essential workers,” about one-third of the workforce, largely working class and disproportionately minorities, were expected to carry on. There was no historical precedent for success in what was attempted: using non-pharmaceutical interventions — lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. — to stifle a pandemic. And there was, Macedo and Lee report, “no relationship between the stringency of state” restrictions and covid mortality rates.
The biomedical establishment, academia and remarkably unquestioning media reacted ferociously — politically, not scientifically — against the theory that the pandemic’s origin was a leak from a Chinese lab doing “gain of function” research that engineers especially transmissible and/or virulent viruses. This origin is now widely deemed plausible, even probable. The authors note that Anthony S. Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious-disease specialist, initiated the writing of a paper, more political than scientific, asserting the virus’s natural origin, then cited the paper against the lab-leak hypothesis. He repeatedly and clearly misled Congress with emphatic denials of his involvement in funding gain-of-function research.
The three eminent epidemiologists who wrote the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration — proposing pandemic mitigations focused on the elderly and persons with comorbidities — were disparaged by Francis Collins, then head of the National Institutes of Health, as “fringe” figures. This adjective conveys a presumption against departures from groupthink. Galileo was a fringe figure.
In September 2020, about 100 Stanford public health professors denounced a colleague — author of five books of health care policy — whose sin was arguing that policy should “minimize all harms,” not simply to stop the coronavirus “at all costs.” Two months later, Stanford’s Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly to censure him. Censure, not refute. Those declaring the scientific consensus unquestionable included two professors of comparative literature and a professor of theater and performance studies.
Despite the fact, quickly known, that covid largely spared the young, the heads of the major teachers unions called for prolonged school closures, during which their members were paid. Even after the ineffectiveness of masking was revealed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said children as young as 2 should wear them all day.
In the ever-overwrought Atlantic magazine, Georgia’s decision to end lockdowns was called an “experiment in human sacrifice.” But cumulatively, the consequences of unfocused measures taken against the coronavirus — from cancer screenings missed because of lockdowns, to a generation’s learning loss and a legacy of chronic absenteeism from schools, to myopia in children from excessive screen time, to accelerated dementia among the isolated elderly — were worse than the disease, whose infections were mostly (more than 98 percent) mild. The costs of hysteria, partly driven by “noble lies” to panic the public into compliance with authoritarian measures, will, Macedo and Lee say, affect “the health, wellbeing, and longevity of the whole population years into the future.”
“The ‘pandemic,’” write Macedo and Lee, “was routinely said to have closed schools, businesses, theaters, travel, and so on, rather than government officials’ decisions.” The authors have produced the most dismaying dissection of U.S. policymaking since David Halberstam’s Vietnam War policy autopsy, “The Best and the Brightest.”
Their book is more dismaying, but also exhilarating. Vietnam revealed the insularity and hubris of a small coterie of foreign policy shapers. Macedo and Lee identify much broader and deeper cultural sicknesses. But their meticulous depictions and plausible explanations of the myriad institutional failures demonstrate social science at its finest.
The worst public health crisis in 100 years became arguably the worst public policy failure in U.S. history because of social pathologies that the pathogen triggered. The coronavirus pandemic is over. What it revealed lingers: intellectual malpractice and authoritarian impulses infecting governmental, scientific, academic and media institutions.
This is unsparingly documented by two Princeton social scientists, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, in “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.” The most comprehensive and aggressive mobilization of emergency powers in U.S. history, wielded with scant regard for collateral consequences, exacerbated inequalities, included “extraordinary restrictions on free speech” and constituted a “stress test” that “the central truth-seeking departments of liberal democracy: journalism, science, and universities” frequently flunked. Macedo and Lee say the “moralization of disagreements” stifled dissent, employing censorship and shaming.
Incantations to “follow the science” obscured this: Science cannot “tell us what to do” because gargantuan government interventions in society involve contestable judgments across the range of human values. And large uncertainties, requiring difficult choices demanding cost-benefit analyses that were neglected during the pandemic.
The authors, self-described as “on the progressive side,” detail how “the class biases of pandemic restrictions” — favored the “laptop class” of knowledge workers and others able to work remotely. “Essential workers,” about one-third of the workforce, largely working class and disproportionately minorities, were expected to carry on. There was no historical precedent for success in what was attempted: using non-pharmaceutical interventions — lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. — to stifle a pandemic. And there was, Macedo and Lee report, “no relationship between the stringency of state” restrictions and covid mortality rates.
The biomedical establishment, academia and remarkably unquestioning media reacted ferociously — politically, not scientifically — against the theory that the pandemic’s origin was a leak from a Chinese lab doing “gain of function” research that engineers especially transmissible and/or virulent viruses. This origin is now widely deemed plausible, even probable. The authors note that Anthony S. Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious-disease specialist, initiated the writing of a paper, more political than scientific, asserting the virus’s natural origin, then cited the paper against the lab-leak hypothesis. He repeatedly and clearly misled Congress with emphatic denials of his involvement in funding gain-of-function research.
The three eminent epidemiologists who wrote the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration — proposing pandemic mitigations focused on the elderly and persons with comorbidities — were disparaged by Francis Collins, then head of the National Institutes of Health, as “fringe” figures. This adjective conveys a presumption against departures from groupthink. Galileo was a fringe figure.
In September 2020, about 100 Stanford public health professors denounced a colleague — author of five books of health care policy — whose sin was arguing that policy should “minimize all harms,” not simply to stop the coronavirus “at all costs.” Two months later, Stanford’s Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly to censure him. Censure, not refute. Those declaring the scientific consensus unquestionable included two professors of comparative literature and a professor of theater and performance studies.
Despite the fact, quickly known, that covid largely spared the young, the heads of the major teachers unions called for prolonged school closures, during which their members were paid. Even after the ineffectiveness of masking was revealed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said children as young as 2 should wear them all day.
In the ever-overwrought Atlantic magazine, Georgia’s decision to end lockdowns was called an “experiment in human sacrifice.” But cumulatively, the consequences of unfocused measures taken against the coronavirus — from cancer screenings missed because of lockdowns, to a generation’s learning loss and a legacy of chronic absenteeism from schools, to myopia in children from excessive screen time, to accelerated dementia among the isolated elderly — were worse than the disease, whose infections were mostly (more than 98 percent) mild. The costs of hysteria, partly driven by “noble lies” to panic the public into compliance with authoritarian measures, will, Macedo and Lee say, affect “the health, wellbeing, and longevity of the whole population years into the future.”
“The ‘pandemic,’” write Macedo and Lee, “was routinely said to have closed schools, businesses, theaters, travel, and so on, rather than government officials’ decisions.” The authors have produced the most dismaying dissection of U.S. policymaking since David Halberstam’s Vietnam War policy autopsy, “The Best and the Brightest.”
Their book is more dismaying, but also exhilarating. Vietnam revealed the insularity and hubris of a small coterie of foreign policy shapers. Macedo and Lee identify much broader and deeper cultural sicknesses. But their meticulous depictions and plausible explanations of the myriad institutional failures demonstrate social science at its finest.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
It will be a good thang to have retrospective analysis such as Macedo and Lee. This is how the world learns. To sift through experience (and hopefully some data) and draw inferences.
There are a lot of thangs in their book worth discussing.
I'll take one. School closures. The quote from the post above on that topic is:
"Despite the fact, quickly known, that covid largely spared the young, the heads of the major teachers unions called for prolonged school closures, during which their members were paid. Even after the ineffectiveness of masking was revealed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said children as young as 2 should wear them all day."
I'll just make a couple points about that:
1) As the authors note, almost from the start the age-dependent nature of the effects of covid was pretty well understood.
2) Afaik school closures were not something seen as necessary to protect healthy children. There were arguments advanced about protecting teachers/staff and a subset of children with vulnerabilities (such as those with cancer). But the main argument was to protect grandma and grandpa. Limit the spread among the general population (including school children) to protect the more vulnerable portions of the population. That's how I remember it anyhow.
3) I discussed in this thread and other threads how costly school closures were and the need to work strenuously to reopen schools as quickly as possible. For me this meant doubling down on every other (less costly) intervention. Including ones that worked imperfectly (like mask wearing). Masks have limited efficacy. But they have some efficacy (they and other interventions caused the incidence of the flu to crater). And were the type of low-cost intervention that was worth doubling down on to avoid much higher-cost interventions like school closing.
Anyhow I welcome Macedo and Lee's book, even while disagreeing with some of it. We have a little distance from covid and with the help of that perspective can start looking at it a bit more dispassionately.
There are a lot of thangs in their book worth discussing.
I'll take one. School closures. The quote from the post above on that topic is:
"Despite the fact, quickly known, that covid largely spared the young, the heads of the major teachers unions called for prolonged school closures, during which their members were paid. Even after the ineffectiveness of masking was revealed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said children as young as 2 should wear them all day."
I'll just make a couple points about that:
1) As the authors note, almost from the start the age-dependent nature of the effects of covid was pretty well understood.
2) Afaik school closures were not something seen as necessary to protect healthy children. There were arguments advanced about protecting teachers/staff and a subset of children with vulnerabilities (such as those with cancer). But the main argument was to protect grandma and grandpa. Limit the spread among the general population (including school children) to protect the more vulnerable portions of the population. That's how I remember it anyhow.
3) I discussed in this thread and other threads how costly school closures were and the need to work strenuously to reopen schools as quickly as possible. For me this meant doubling down on every other (less costly) intervention. Including ones that worked imperfectly (like mask wearing). Masks have limited efficacy. But they have some efficacy (they and other interventions caused the incidence of the flu to crater). And were the type of low-cost intervention that was worth doubling down on to avoid much higher-cost interventions like school closing.
Anyhow I welcome Macedo and Lee's book, even while disagreeing with some of it. We have a little distance from covid and with the help of that perspective can start looking at it a bit more dispassionately.
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I dunno, Jim Crow and Japanese Internment were actually pretty bad.
sturg33
I
Until you're willing to admit you were wrong about the absurdities of masks, the forced vaccinations, the school closures, the lockdowns, and about 20 other things you lecture about for 2 years, your reflection is uselessĺ