We Still Need to Learn the Right Lessons from America's Disastrous COVID Response (global warming, statistics)
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My belief is the first 3 months response was relatively correct with the limited data available. However I believe those with the authority became addicted to the power or governed solely by fear. Cloth mask are only effective if you’re already infected to help reduce you’re transmission of the virus. Mandating mask made people become complacent about basic hygiene methods like handwashing. Forcing people to wear mask for hours at a time increased the risk of infections because they were wearing the same mask all day long. Hospital workers tend to change out their mask through the day. Some facilities had employees wear a disposable surgical mask over their N95 mask and store their N95 mask for later use because of the lack of mask available at the time. Forcing nursing homes to receive COVID positive patients ceated super spreader events resulting in far more deaths. Deaths from COVID should have been recorded instead of those who died of other reasons but tested positive for COVID. This artificially increased the percentage of those killed by the virus and helped to increase the fear of the public. Once the real death toll from the virus was realized then alterations could be made in response to those changes in data. First off, those young and healthy shouldn’t bother with mask but continue hygiene methods like handwashing. Those in the high risk groups should wear mask in addition to hygiene methods. No mandates on mask except for healthcare facilities. Once the vaccines were released and 75% of the adult population was vaccinated then any further restrictions would be removed. People would still be free to wear their mask if they felt they needed to do so just like they are today. Once the number of COVID positive patients at regional hospitals dropped to a certain percentage then the mask requirement would be lifted for all staff except those who must enter rooms of COVID positive patients and only for when they’re entering those rooms.
In those early days of COVID I completely agreed with restrictions on mass transit, bars, nightclubs, entertainment venues, and limiting capacity to a certain percentage of max capacity. Once the data was collected then things could gradually begin opening for limited capacity, like restaurants and and entertainment venues. Outdoor activities should not have been restricted at all except for large closely packed gatherings. Hiking trails, paddle boarding, swimming at the beach, jogging in the park were never high risk for COVID infections. Those were knee jerk policies put in place for fear and greed of power.
In your opinion, which country had the correct response?
Remember hindsight is 20/20.
This is a very good topic. Response to COVID should be studied and debated honestly for future generations to learn from the mistakes made. In past pandemics the mistakes included not acting quick enough in response. In this case it was a response in extreme based upon fear alone. They used computer models and doomsday scenarios to generate mass fear which resulted in extreme policies as well as physical violence by the public. What made it worse was the policies weren’t enforced equally. For example, groups gathering at a beach or city park were harassed by the authorities or criticized by the press as creating a super spreader event but thousands of tightly packed protestors on the streets were perfectly fine by those same authorities and press. Politicians and celebrities calling for mask mandates to be strictly enforced photographed or videoed at indoor parties without their mask showed a “rules for thee but not for me” mentality of elitist.
Covid transmission mostly happens when you have people close together indoors for an extended period of time (a few hours, rather than a few minutes) and with poor ventilation. A decently ventilated office without crowding is not a major source of transmission, and neither is someone dropping into the convenience store maskless. Forcing someone to wear a cloth mask to get to their dining table where they will eat maskless for an hour makes zero sense. Also, if you have 3 people out of 20 or 30 in an office that actually want to continue coming in the office rather than working from home - forcing those 3 people to work from home has almost zero public health benefit since those last 3 would be unlikely to spread covid among each other.
However, this all makes perfect sense if you view it from a lens of Democrats trying to force a cultural change, rather than actual public health. They want to use masks to show off their moral character, even if their masks are the single layer cloth masks with near zero benefit. Similarly, forced remote work was aimed not at public health*, but at forcing a cultural shift, which, absent collaboration between corporations to all RTO at the same time, will take many years to undo.
*I should qualify this. For the first few months of the pandemic, when there was little scientific data available, it seemed reasonable to require remote work among those that could. However, by fall 2020 there was plenty of data showing that offices were never the primary driver of transmission. Yet they continued to push for forced remote work that lasted well into 2021.
The biggest problem with the whole response to the pandemic was that the Democrats turned it into a political weapon to attack Trump with.
This should be all anyone needs to know about covid. If Trump dropped off the face of the Earth tomorrow so would covid.
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