What was the underlying goal of these efforts? Did the experts genuinely believe that the virus could be suppressed or even eradicated through these methods? When does track-and-trace make sense and when is it futile, and how can we know?
The Failure of Track-and-Trace: Interview with Jay Bhattacharya Continue Reading
Covid-19 cases will eventually rise. I don’t know when, but we are extremely vulnerable to an ill-formed and schizophrenic response. As we near midterm elections, politicians will be more volatile, and seek to control news that is seen as a threat to political fortunes. That’s the territory for bad decision making.
As we step into year three, we urgently need to widen the lens beyond Covid metrics, beyond epidemiology, beyond even science itself. With Covid easing into endemicity, we need to grapple with big-picture concepts like costs, benefits and tradeoffs. We need to ask the tough questions. We need to name the hulking elephants in the room, to lift up their trunks and see what lies beneath.
By all means, forget about Covid and live life as normally as possible in defiance of those who live to foster fear. But, never forget the disastrous Covid restrictions that created such destruction. We cannot let anyone off the hook, much less pretend that the policy disaster that created billions of personal tragedies never happened.
According to Johnson, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky is one of the public health officials who has been non-compliant with his requests. To date, Johnson says he has made eight specific requests, directly of Walensky, that have gone unanswered.
Why Is Walensky Refusing to Answer this Senator’s Questions? Continue Reading
Yet, throughout this pandemic, notice how many global health scholars were totally silent on lockdowns. How many global health researchers said nothing as India sacrificed the future of a generation with school closures? How many US based disparity researchers or early childhood advocates were silent on school closure? I believe most were quiet!
Consider that the powers and plans to do this still exist. They can do it again. Mardi Gras can be canceled again. You can be locked in your home. Your church, business, gym, and favorite watering hole can be closed. They have promised as much. This is what needs to change.
Some degree of levity about the comedic qualities of the last two years is merited but it needs to be complemented by a serious commitment toward radical reform. We need a new way to think about how a good society can develop freely even in the presence of infectious disease. Freedom needs to be nonnegotiable.
Overreaching public health officials and politicians—and the journalists-in-name-only who served as their mindless, unquestioning megaphones—have fully earned our withering condemnation. Indeed, holding them accountable is essential to sparing ourselves and future generations from repeating this dystopian chapter of human history.
Public Health Erred on the Side of Catastrophe Continue Reading
The CDC nowhere admits this much less apologizes for it. Two years in, the CDC seems to have rediscovered the traditional practice of public health, and has justified this new wisdom based on changed conditions, while never even bothering to claim that its previous measures and guidelines achieved anything along the way.
The CDC Discovers Actual Public Health, Just in Time Continue Reading
Post Covid, the group that needs to face the strongest restrictions is public health itself. We must remove the power we have granted public health, which has often been misused.
It’s the Compulsion that Needs to Be Restricted Continue Reading
Experts in vision think online schooling during lockdown may well be increasing the speed of myopic eye growth. A host of possible sequelae from excess myopia include things like increased risk of glaucoma, macular degeneration and retinal detachment.
Lockdowns Might Have Contributed to Myopia In Children Continue Reading
