Policies developed by public health officials in early 2020, in response to the COVID pandemic, were kept in place much longer than needed. Maintaining these policies was at odds with previous pandemic experiences, and they eventually led to disaster. Here we briefly explore some of the evidence to support our position.
COVID mandates
I was supportive when governmental institutions told me to social distance and mask up. I bristle when they tell me that there should be no medical or surgical management for gender dysphoria for those under 18, even with parental consent. The science for both is unclear and unsettled. Are my feelings driven by politics or something else?
A new paper from Johns Hopkins suggests that lockdowns had minimal impact on our health based on a meta-analysis of the effects of lockdowns on COVID-19. With blood in the water, partisan lines were quickly drawn. “Fox News has charged that there's been a ‘full-on media blackout,’" and the medical media, while not quite as hyperbolic, were dismissive because it was a pre-print, by economists, using a poor sample of studies. One more important note, the paper is 64 pages long, so who among all those reporters and experts actually read the paper? I did. [1]
Even as the Supreme Court authorized the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to mandate vaccination of all Medicaid and Medicare employees–including those not employed by the federal government, a Texas court [1] just blocked the federal government from mandating vaccination over its own employees. That case surely will eventually reach the Supreme Court. All the while, we will grapple with the delay in vaccination – the effect of which, for the moment, is not entirely known. Perhaps, this is all about “decision-making under uncertainty?”