I don't think it's fair to paint the public health people
by AquinasDomer (2023-12-31 21:15:41)

In reply to: That's not being a jerk.  posted by IrishApache


With that broad a brush. This is an interview with Ashish Jha who Biden put in charge of COVID policy for a while. He was pushing to be more aggressive on opening schools in fall of 2020 but doing it in an evidence based way.

Normally you'd have a competent executive response and public health would provide information to balance risks vs benefits and such. Instead you had the president reject basic scientific facts and push reopening with no adjustment to the reality on the ground. Fauci had to co traditional POTUS on live TV not over policy but basic science.

That led to a false dichotomy over 100% open vs 100% lock down. A lot of governors on the left defaulted to the maximal shutdown possible instead of balancing factors like reasonable governors (examples being Polis in Colorado and Dewine in Ohio).

I fear the next time we have a pandemic (and I expect another in my lifetime) our lesson will be we should have YOLO'd the last one.




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