https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1jsi6wo/a_case_study_in_groupthink_were_liberals_wrong/
A case study in groupthink: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?
US political scientists book argues aggressive Covid policies such as
mask mandates were in some cases misguided
J Oliver Conroy
Sat 5 Apr 2025 10.00 EDT
Share
Were conservatives right to question Covid lockdowns? Were the liberals
who defended them less grounded in science than they believed? And did >liberal dismissiveness of the other side come at a cost that Americans
will continue to pay for many years?
A new book by two political scientists argues yes to all three
questions, making the case that the aggressive policies that the US and
other countries adopted to fight Covid including school shutdowns,
business closures, mask mandates and social distancing were in some
cases misguided and in many cases deserved more rigorous public debate.
In their peer-reviewed book, In Covids Wake: How Our Politics Failed
Us, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee argue that public health authorities,
the mainstream media, and progressive elites often pushed pandemic
measures without weighing their costs and benefits, and ostracized
people who expressed good-faith disagreement.
a book cover with a photo of a sign on a highway reading closed due to >covid-19
View image in fullscreen
The book cover of In Covids Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.
Photograph: Princeton University Press
Policy learning seemed to be short-circuited during the pandemic, Lee
said. It became so moralized, like: Were not interested in looking at
how other people are [responding to the pandemic], because only bad
people would do it a different way from the way were doing.
She and Macedo spoke to the Guardian by video call. The Princeton
University professors both consider themselves left-leaning, and the
book grew out of research Macedo was doing on the ways progressive
discourse gets handicapped by a refusal to engage with conservative or >outside arguments. Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the >effects of partisan bias, he said.
Many Covid stances presented as public health consensus were not as
grounded in empirical evidence as many Americans may have believed,
Macedo and Lee argue. At times, scientific and health authorities acted
less like neutral experts and more like self-interested actors, engaging
in PR efforts to downplay uncertainty, missteps or conflicts of interest.
Its a controversial argument. Covid-19 killed more than a million
Americans, according to US government estimates. The early days of the >pandemic left hospitals overwhelmed, morgues overflowing, and scientists >scrambling to understand the new disease and how to contain it.
Still, Macedo and Lee say, it is unclear why shutdowns and closures went
on so long, particularly in Democratic states. The book argues that in
the US the pandemic became more politically polarized over time, after, >initially, only modest policy differences between Republican- and >Democratic-leaning states.
After April 2020, however, red and blue America diverged. Donald Trump >contributed to that polarization by downplaying the severity of the
virus. Significant policy differences also emerged. Ron DeSantis, the >Republican governor of Florida, moved to re-open physical schools
quickly, which progressives characterized as irresponsible.
Yet in the end there was no meaningful difference in Covid mortality
rates between Democratic and Republican states in the pre-vaccine
period, according to CDC data cited in the book, despite Republican
states more lenient policies. Macedo and Lee also favorably compare
Sweden, which controversially avoided mass lockdowns but ultimately had
a lower mortality rate than many other European countries.
Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan
bias
The shutdowns had foreseeable and quantifiable costs, they say, many of
which we are still paying. Learning loss and school absenteeism soared. >Inflation went through the roof thanks in part to lockdown spending and >stimulus payments. Small businesses defaulted; other medical treatments
like cancer screenings and mental health care suffered; and rates of >loneliness and crime increased. The economic strain on poor and minority >Americans was particularly severe.
Covid policies escalated into culture wars, amplifying tensions around
other social issues. Teachers unions, which are often bastions of
Democratic support, painted school re-openings as rooted in sexism,
racism, and misogyny and a recipe for structural racism, the book
notes, despite the fact that minority and poor students were most >disadvantaged by remote learning.
These measures also had a literal price. In inflation-adjusted terms, >Macedo and Lee write, the United States spent more on pandemic aid in
2020 than it spent on the 2009 stimulus package and the New Deal
combined or about what the US spent on war production in 1943.
a child playing a cello inside her home
View image in fullscreen
A student listens to her music teacher over laptop during a lockdown on
5 April 2020 in New York City. Photograph: Education Images/Universal
Images Group/Getty Images
Yet of the $5tn that the US Congress authorized in 2020 and 2021 for
Covid expenditure, only about 10% went to direct medical expenses such
as hospitals or vaccine distribution, according to the book; most of the >spending was on economic relief to people and businesses affected by >shutdowns. Ten per cent of that relief was stolen by fraud, according to
the AP.
The pandemic was an emergency with no modern precedent, of course, and >hindsight is easy. But In Covids Wake tries to take into account what >information was known at the time including earlier pandemic
preparedness studies. Reports by Johns Hopkins (2019), the World Health >Organization (2019), the state of Illinois (2014) and the British
government (2011) had all expressed ambivalence or caution about the
kind of quarantine measures that were soon taken.
We take a look at the state of the evidence as it was in early 2020,
Lee said. It was clear at the time that the evidence was quite
unsettled around all of this, and if policymakers had been more honest
with the public about these uncertainties, I think they would have
maintained public trust better.
They wanted there to be an answer that if we do X and Y, we can
prevent this disaster. And so theyre kind of grasping at straws
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a wargaming exercise
in October 2019, shortly before the pandemic began, to simulate a deadly >coronavirus pandemic; the findings explicitly urged that [t]ravel and
trade be maintained even in the face of a pandemic. Similarly, a WHO
paper in 2019 said that some measures such as border closures and
contact tracing were not recommended in any circumstances.
And yet we did all of that in short order, Macedo said, and without
people referring back to these plans.
He and Lee also believe there was a strong element of class bias, with a >left-leaning laptop class that could easily work from home touting >anti-Covid measures that were much easier for some Americans to adopt
than others. Many relatively affluent Americans became even wealthier
during the pandemic, in part due to rising housing values.
At the same time, the laptop class was only able to socially isolate at
home in part because other people risked exposure to provide groceries. >Stay-at-home measures were partly intended to protect essential
workers, but policymakers living in crisis-stricken major metropolitan
areas such as New York or Washington DC did not reckon with why social >distancing and other measures might be less important in rural parts of
the country where Covid rates were lower.
Lockdowns were intended to slow Covids spread, yet previous pandemic >recommendations had suggested they only be used very early in an
outbreak and even then do not buy much time, Macedo said.
two people stand next to each other smiling
View image in fullscreen
Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. Photograph: Courtesy of Stephen Macedo >Policymakers and experts often embraced stringent measures for reasons
that are more political than medical, Macedo and Lee argue; in a
pandemic, authorities are keen to assure anxious publics that they are
in charge and doing something.
In strange contrast, policymakers and journalists in the US and
elsewhere seemed to take China as a model, the book argues, despite the
fact that China is an authoritarian state and had concealed the scale of
the outbreak during the crucial early days of the pandemic. Its regime
had obvious incentives to mislead foreign observers, and used draconian >quarantine measures such as physically welding people into their homes.
When the WHO organized a joint China field mission with the Chinese >government, in February 2020, non-Chinese researchers found it difficult
to converse with their Chinese counterparts away from government
handlers. Yet the WHOs report was effusive in its praise of Chinas >approach, the book notes.
My view is that there was just a great deal of wishful thinking on the
part of technocrats of all kinds, Lee said. They wanted there to be an >answer that if we do X and Y, we can prevent this disaster. And so
theyre kind of grasping at straws. The Chinese example gave them hope.
She noted that Covid policymakers might have been better served if there
had been people assigned to act as devils advocates in internal >deliberations.
Lee and Macedo are not natural scientists or public health
professionals, they emphasize, and their book is about failures in
public deliberation over Covid-19, rather than a prescription for
managing pandemics.
But they do wade into the debate about Covid-19s origin, arguing that
the lab leak hypothesis that Covid-19 accidentally leaked from the
Wuhan Institute of Virology, rather than spontaneously leaping from
animals to humans was unfairly dismissed.
The Wuhan Institute studied coronaviruses similar to the one responsible
for Covid-19, had a documented history of safety breaches, was located
near the outbreak, and is known to have experimented on viruses using >controversial gain-of-function methods funded by the US, which involve >mutating pathogens to see what they might look like in a more advanced
or dangerous form.
If policymakers had been more honest with the public about these >uncertainties, I think they would have maintained public trust better
Perhaps because Trump had fanned racial paranoia by calling Covid-19 the >China virus and rightwing influencers were spreading the notion that
it had been deliberately engineered and unleashed on the world by China,
many scientists, public health experts and journalists reacted by
framing the idea of a lab leak even an accidental one as an
offensive conspiracy theory. Dr Anthony Fauci and other top public
health figures were evasive or in some cases dishonest about the
possibility of a lab leak, Macedo and Lee say, as well as the fact that
a US non-profit funded by the National Institutes of Health allegedly
funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute.
Since then, though, the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have >cautiously endorsed the lab leak theory, and the discourse around Covid
has softened somewhat. The economist Emily Oster sparked immense
backlash by arguing against school closures in 2020. Now publications
such as New York Magazine and the New York Times have acknowledged the >plausibility of the lab leak hypothesis, for example, and there is
growing consensus that school closures hurt many children.
The reception to In Covids Wake has been more positive than Macedo and
Lee expected perhaps a sign that some of their arguments have
penetrated the mainstream, if not that weve gotten better as a society
at talking about difficult things. The reception of the book has been
much less controversial [and] contentious than we expected, Macedo said.
cashiers putting groceries in shopping bags
Disposable: what Covid-19 did to those who couldnt afford to fight the
virus
Read more
Yet the wounds fester and debates continue. Some readers of the New York >Times were furious when The Daily, the newspapers flagship podcast,
recently interviewed them, with subscribers arguing that the episode was
not sufficiently critical of their stance. And some coverage of the book
has criticized it for underplaying the danger of the disease.
Macedo and Lee said that a few of their colleagues have expressed
concern that their critique could fuel political attacks on science a
worry that crossed their minds too. Our response is that the best way
to refute criticisms that science and universities have been politicized
is to be open to criticism and willing to engage in self-criticism,
Macedo said.
We need to make sure these institutions are in the best possible
working order to face the challenges ahead. And we think thats by being >honest, not by covering over mistakes or being unwilling to face up to
hard questions.
Michael Ejercito wrote:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1jsi6wo/a_case_study_in_groupthink_were_liberals_wrong/
A case study in groupthink’: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?
US political scientists’ book argues aggressive Covid policies such as
mask mandates were in some cases misguided
J Oliver Conroy
Sat 5 Apr 2025 10.00 EDT
Share
Were conservatives right to question Covid lockdowns? Were the liberals
who defended them less grounded in science than they believed? And did
liberal dismissiveness of the other side come at a cost that Americans
will continue to pay for many years?
A new book by two political scientists argues yes to all three
questions, making the case that the aggressive policies that the US and
other countries adopted to fight Covid – including school shutdowns,
business closures, mask mandates and social distancing – were in some
cases misguided and in many cases deserved more rigorous public debate.
In their peer-reviewed book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed
Us, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee argue that public health authorities,
the mainstream media, and progressive elites often pushed pandemic
measures without weighing their costs and benefits, and ostracized
people who expressed good-faith disagreement.
a book cover with a photo of a sign on a highway reading ‘closed due to
covid-19’
View image in fullscreen
The book cover of In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.
Photograph: Princeton University Press
“Policy learning seemed to be short-circuited during the pandemic,” Lee >> said. “It became so moralized, like: ‘We’re not interested in looking at
how other people are [responding to the pandemic], because only bad
people would do it a different way from the way we’re doing’.”
She and Macedo spoke to the Guardian by video call. The Princeton
University professors both consider themselves left-leaning, and the
book grew out of research Macedo was doing on the ways progressive
discourse gets handicapped by a refusal to engage with conservative or
outside arguments. “Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the >> effects of partisan bias,” he said.
Many Covid stances presented as public health consensus were not as
grounded in empirical evidence as many Americans may have believed,
Macedo and Lee argue. At times, scientific and health authorities acted
less like neutral experts and more like self-interested actors, engaging
in PR efforts to downplay uncertainty, missteps or conflicts of interest.
It’s a controversial argument. Covid-19 killed more than a million
Americans, according to US government estimates. The early days of the
pandemic left hospitals overwhelmed, morgues overflowing, and scientists
scrambling to understand the new disease and how to contain it.
Still, Macedo and Lee say, it is unclear why shutdowns and closures went
on so long, particularly in Democratic states. The book argues that in
the US the pandemic became more politically polarized over time, after,
initially, “only modest policy differences between Republican- and
Democratic-leaning states”.
After April 2020, however, red and blue America diverged. Donald Trump
contributed to that polarization by downplaying the severity of the
virus. Significant policy differences also emerged. Ron DeSantis, the
Republican governor of Florida, moved to re-open physical schools
quickly, which progressives characterized as irresponsible.
Yet in the end there was “no meaningful difference” in Covid mortality >> rates between Democratic and Republican states in the pre-vaccine
period, according to CDC data cited in the book, despite Republican
states’ more lenient policies. Macedo and Lee also favorably compare
Sweden, which controversially avoided mass lockdowns but ultimately had
a lower mortality rate than many other European countries.
Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan
bias
The shutdowns had foreseeable and quantifiable costs, they say, many of
which we are still paying. Learning loss and school absenteeism soared.
Inflation went through the roof thanks in part to lockdown spending and
stimulus payments. Small businesses defaulted; other medical treatments
like cancer screenings and mental health care suffered; and rates of
loneliness and crime increased. The economic strain on poor and minority
Americans was particularly severe.
Covid policies escalated into culture wars, amplifying tensions around
other social issues. Teachers’ unions, which are often bastions of
Democratic support, painted school re-openings as “rooted in sexism,
racism, and misogyny” and “a recipe for … structural racism”, the book
notes, despite the fact that minority and poor students were most
disadvantaged by remote learning.
These measures also had a literal price. “In inflation-adjusted terms,” >> Macedo and Lee write, “the United States spent more on pandemic aid in
2020 than it spent on the 2009 stimulus package and the New Deal
combined” – or about what the US spent on war production in 1943.
a child playing a cello inside her home
View image in fullscreen
A student listens to her music teacher over laptop during a lockdown on
5 April 2020 in New York City. Photograph: Education Images/Universal
Images Group/Getty Images
Yet of the $5tn that the US Congress authorized in 2020 and 2021 for
Covid expenditure, only about 10% went to direct medical expenses such
as hospitals or vaccine distribution, according to the book; most of the
spending was on economic relief to people and businesses affected by
shutdowns. Ten per cent of that relief was stolen by fraud, according to
the AP.
The pandemic was an emergency with no modern precedent, of course, and
hindsight is easy. But In Covid’s Wake tries to take into account what
information was known at the time – including earlier pandemic
preparedness studies. Reports by Johns Hopkins (2019), the World Health
Organization (2019), the state of Illinois (2014) and the British
government (2011) had all expressed ambivalence or caution about the
kind of quarantine measures that were soon taken.
“We take a look at the state of the evidence as it was in early 2020,” >> Lee said. “It was clear at the time that the evidence was quite
unsettled around all of this, and if policymakers had been more honest
with the public about these uncertainties, I think they would have
maintained public trust better.”
They wanted there to be an answer – that if we do X and Y, we can
prevent this disaster. And so they’re kind of grasping at straws
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a wargaming exercise
in October 2019, shortly before the pandemic began, to simulate a deadly
coronavirus pandemic; the findings explicitly urged that “[t]ravel and
trade … be maintained even in the face of a pandemic”. Similarly, a WHO >> paper in 2019 said that some measures – such as border closures and
contact tracing – were “not recommended in any circumstances”.
“And yet we did all of that in short order,” Macedo said, “and without >> people referring back to these plans.”
He and Lee also believe there was a strong element of class bias, with a
left-leaning “laptop class” that could easily work from home touting
anti-Covid measures that were much easier for some Americans to adopt
than others. Many relatively affluent Americans became even wealthier
during the pandemic, in part due to rising housing values.
At the same time, the laptop class was only able to socially isolate at
home in part because other people risked exposure to provide groceries.
Stay-at-home measures were partly intended to protect “essential
workers”, but policymakers living in crisis-stricken major metropolitan
areas such as New York or Washington DC did not reckon with why social
distancing and other measures might be less important in rural parts of
the country where Covid rates were lower.
Lockdowns were intended to slow Covid’s spread, yet previous pandemic
recommendations had suggested they only be used very early in an
outbreak and even then do not buy much time, Macedo said.
two people stand next to each other smiling
View image in fullscreen
Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. Photograph: Courtesy of Stephen Macedo
Policymakers and experts often embraced stringent measures for reasons
that are more political than medical, Macedo and Lee argue; in a
pandemic, authorities are keen to assure anxious publics that they are
“in charge” and “doing something”.
In strange contrast, policymakers and journalists in the US and
elsewhere seemed to take China as a model, the book argues, despite the
fact that China is an authoritarian state and had concealed the scale of
the outbreak during the crucial early days of the pandemic. Its regime
had obvious incentives to mislead foreign observers, and used draconian
quarantine measures such as physically welding people into their homes.
When the WHO organized a joint China field mission with the Chinese
government, in February 2020, non-Chinese researchers found it difficult
to converse with their Chinese counterparts away from government
handlers. Yet the WHO’s report was “effusive in its praise” of China’s
approach, the book notes.
“My view is that there was just a great deal of wishful thinking on the
part of technocrats of all kinds,” Lee said. “They wanted there to be an >> answer – that if we do X and Y, we can prevent this disaster. And so
they’re kind of grasping at straws. The Chinese example gave them hope.” >> She noted that Covid policymakers might have been better served if there
had been people assigned to act as devil’s advocates in internal
deliberations.
Lee and Macedo are not natural scientists or public health
professionals, they emphasize, and their book is about failures in
public deliberation over Covid-19, rather than a prescription for
managing pandemics.
But they do wade into the debate about Covid-19’s origin, arguing that
the “lab leak” hypothesis – that Covid-19 accidentally leaked from the >> Wuhan Institute of Virology, rather than spontaneously leaping from
animals to humans – was unfairly dismissed.
The Wuhan Institute studied coronaviruses similar to the one responsible
for Covid-19, had a documented history of safety breaches, was located
near the outbreak, and is known to have experimented on viruses using
controversial “gain-of-function” methods funded by the US, which involve >> mutating pathogens to see what they might look like in a more advanced
or dangerous form.
If policymakers had been more honest with the public about these
uncertainties, I think they would have maintained public trust better
Perhaps because Trump had fanned racial paranoia by calling Covid-19 the
“China virus” and rightwing influencers were spreading the notion that >> it had been deliberately engineered and unleashed on the world by China,
many scientists, public health experts and journalists reacted by
framing the idea of a lab leak – even an accidental one – as an
offensive conspiracy theory. Dr Anthony Fauci and other top public
health figures were evasive or in some cases dishonest about the
possibility of a lab leak, Macedo and Lee say, as well as the fact that
a US non-profit funded by the National Institutes of Health allegedly
funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute.
Since then, though, the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have
cautiously endorsed the lab leak theory, and the discourse around Covid
has softened somewhat. The economist Emily Oster sparked immense
backlash by arguing against school closures in 2020. Now publications
such as New York Magazine and the New York Times have acknowledged the
plausibility of the lab leak hypothesis, for example, and there is
growing consensus that school closures hurt many children.
The reception to In Covid’s Wake has been more positive than Macedo and
Lee expected – perhaps a sign that some of their arguments have
penetrated the mainstream, if not that we’ve gotten better as a society
at talking about difficult things. “The reception of the book has been
much less controversial [and] contentious than we expected,” Macedo said. >>
cashiers putting groceries in shopping bags
Disposable: what Covid-19 did to those who couldn’t afford to fight the
virus
Read more
Yet the wounds fester and debates continue. Some readers of the New York
Times were furious when The Daily, the newspaper’s flagship podcast,
recently interviewed them, with subscribers arguing that the episode was
not sufficiently critical of their stance. And some coverage of the book
has criticized it for underplaying the danger of the disease.
Macedo and Lee said that a few of their colleagues have expressed
concern that their critique could fuel political attacks on science – a
worry that crossed their minds too. “Our response is that the best way
to refute criticisms that science and universities have been politicized
is to be open to criticism and willing to engage in self-criticism,”
Macedo said.
“We need to make sure these institutions are in the best possible
working order to face the challenges ahead. And we think that’s by being >> honest, not by covering over mistakes or being unwilling to face up to
hard questions.”
HeartDoc Andrew's profile photo
HeartDoc Andrew
Feb 14, 2024, 12:34:03?PM
to
In the interim, we are 100% prepared/protected in the "full armor of
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use Apostle Paul's
secret (Philippians 4:12). Though masking is less protective, it helps
us avoid the appearance of doing the evil of spreading airborne
pathogens while there are people getting sick because of not being
100% protected. It is written that we're to "abstain from **all**
appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22 w/**emphasis**).
Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8 ) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the US & elsewhere is by
rapidly (i.e. use the "Rapid COVID-19 Test" ) finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
"convince it forward" (John 15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic.
Thus, we're hoping for the best while preparing for the worse-case
scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron,
Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations
combining via slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like "Deltamicron"
that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no
longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/6ZoE95d-VKc/m/14vVZoyOBgAJ
) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Michael Ejercito wrote:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1jsi6wo/a_case_study_in_groupthink_were_liberals_wrong/
A case study in groupthink: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?
US political scientists book argues aggressive Covid policies such as
mask mandates were in some cases misguided
J Oliver Conroy
Sat 5 Apr 2025 10.00 EDT
Share
Were conservatives right to question Covid lockdowns? Were the liberals
who defended them less grounded in science than they believed? And did
liberal dismissiveness of the other side come at a cost that Americans
will continue to pay for many years?
A new book by two political scientists argues yes to all three
questions, making the case that the aggressive policies that the US and
other countries adopted to fight Covid including school shutdowns,
business closures, mask mandates and social distancing were in some
cases misguided and in many cases deserved more rigorous public debate.
In their peer-reviewed book, In Covids Wake: How Our Politics Failed
Us, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee argue that public health authorities, >>> the mainstream media, and progressive elites often pushed pandemic
measures without weighing their costs and benefits, and ostracized
people who expressed good-faith disagreement.
a book cover with a photo of a sign on a highway reading closed due to
covid-19
View image in fullscreen
The book cover of In Covids Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.
Photograph: Princeton University Press
Policy learning seemed to be short-circuited during the pandemic, Lee
said. It became so moralized, like: Were not interested in looking at >>> how other people are [responding to the pandemic], because only bad
people would do it a different way from the way were doing.
She and Macedo spoke to the Guardian by video call. The Princeton
University professors both consider themselves left-leaning, and the
book grew out of research Macedo was doing on the ways progressive
discourse gets handicapped by a refusal to engage with conservative or
outside arguments. Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the >>> effects of partisan bias, he said.
Many Covid stances presented as public health consensus were not as
grounded in empirical evidence as many Americans may have believed,
Macedo and Lee argue. At times, scientific and health authorities acted
less like neutral experts and more like self-interested actors, engaging >>> in PR efforts to downplay uncertainty, missteps or conflicts of interest. >>>
Its a controversial argument. Covid-19 killed more than a million
Americans, according to US government estimates. The early days of the
pandemic left hospitals overwhelmed, morgues overflowing, and scientists >>> scrambling to understand the new disease and how to contain it.
Still, Macedo and Lee say, it is unclear why shutdowns and closures went >>> on so long, particularly in Democratic states. The book argues that in
the US the pandemic became more politically polarized over time, after,
initially, only modest policy differences between Republican- and
Democratic-leaning states.
After April 2020, however, red and blue America diverged. Donald Trump
contributed to that polarization by downplaying the severity of the
virus. Significant policy differences also emerged. Ron DeSantis, the
Republican governor of Florida, moved to re-open physical schools
quickly, which progressives characterized as irresponsible.
Yet in the end there was no meaningful difference in Covid mortality
rates between Democratic and Republican states in the pre-vaccine
period, according to CDC data cited in the book, despite Republican
states more lenient policies. Macedo and Lee also favorably compare
Sweden, which controversially avoided mass lockdowns but ultimately had
a lower mortality rate than many other European countries.
Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan >>> bias
The shutdowns had foreseeable and quantifiable costs, they say, many of
which we are still paying. Learning loss and school absenteeism soared.
Inflation went through the roof thanks in part to lockdown spending and
stimulus payments. Small businesses defaulted; other medical treatments
like cancer screenings and mental health care suffered; and rates of
loneliness and crime increased. The economic strain on poor and minority >>> Americans was particularly severe.
Covid policies escalated into culture wars, amplifying tensions around
other social issues. Teachers unions, which are often bastions of
Democratic support, painted school re-openings as rooted in sexism,
racism, and misogyny and a recipe for structural racism, the book
notes, despite the fact that minority and poor students were most
disadvantaged by remote learning.
These measures also had a literal price. In inflation-adjusted terms,
Macedo and Lee write, the United States spent more on pandemic aid in
2020 than it spent on the 2009 stimulus package and the New Deal
combined or about what the US spent on war production in 1943.
a child playing a cello inside her home
View image in fullscreen
A student listens to her music teacher over laptop during a lockdown on
5 April 2020 in New York City. Photograph: Education Images/Universal
Images Group/Getty Images
Yet of the $5tn that the US Congress authorized in 2020 and 2021 for
Covid expenditure, only about 10% went to direct medical expenses such
as hospitals or vaccine distribution, according to the book; most of the >>> spending was on economic relief to people and businesses affected by
shutdowns. Ten per cent of that relief was stolen by fraud, according to >>> the AP.
The pandemic was an emergency with no modern precedent, of course, and
hindsight is easy. But In Covids Wake tries to take into account what
information was known at the time including earlier pandemic
preparedness studies. Reports by Johns Hopkins (2019), the World Health
Organization (2019), the state of Illinois (2014) and the British
government (2011) had all expressed ambivalence or caution about the
kind of quarantine measures that were soon taken.
We take a look at the state of the evidence as it was in early 2020,
Lee said. It was clear at the time that the evidence was quite
unsettled around all of this, and if policymakers had been more honest
with the public about these uncertainties, I think they would have
maintained public trust better.
They wanted there to be an answer that if we do X and Y, we can
prevent this disaster. And so theyre kind of grasping at straws
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a wargaming exercise >>> in October 2019, shortly before the pandemic began, to simulate a deadly >>> coronavirus pandemic; the findings explicitly urged that [t]ravel and
trade be maintained even in the face of a pandemic. Similarly, a WHO
paper in 2019 said that some measures such as border closures and
contact tracing were not recommended in any circumstances.
And yet we did all of that in short order, Macedo said, and without
people referring back to these plans.
He and Lee also believe there was a strong element of class bias, with a >>> left-leaning laptop class that could easily work from home touting
anti-Covid measures that were much easier for some Americans to adopt
than others. Many relatively affluent Americans became even wealthier
during the pandemic, in part due to rising housing values.
At the same time, the laptop class was only able to socially isolate at
home in part because other people risked exposure to provide groceries.
Stay-at-home measures were partly intended to protect essential
workers, but policymakers living in crisis-stricken major metropolitan
areas such as New York or Washington DC did not reckon with why social
distancing and other measures might be less important in rural parts of
the country where Covid rates were lower.
Lockdowns were intended to slow Covids spread, yet previous pandemic
recommendations had suggested they only be used very early in an
outbreak and even then do not buy much time, Macedo said.
two people stand next to each other smiling
View image in fullscreen
Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. Photograph: Courtesy of Stephen Macedo
Policymakers and experts often embraced stringent measures for reasons
that are more political than medical, Macedo and Lee argue; in a
pandemic, authorities are keen to assure anxious publics that they are
in charge and doing something.
In strange contrast, policymakers and journalists in the US and
elsewhere seemed to take China as a model, the book argues, despite the
fact that China is an authoritarian state and had concealed the scale of >>> the outbreak during the crucial early days of the pandemic. Its regime
had obvious incentives to mislead foreign observers, and used draconian
quarantine measures such as physically welding people into their homes.
When the WHO organized a joint China field mission with the Chinese
government, in February 2020, non-Chinese researchers found it difficult >>> to converse with their Chinese counterparts away from government
handlers. Yet the WHOs report was effusive in its praise of Chinas
approach, the book notes.
My view is that there was just a great deal of wishful thinking on the
part of technocrats of all kinds, Lee said. They wanted there to be an >>> answer that if we do X and Y, we can prevent this disaster. And so
theyre kind of grasping at straws. The Chinese example gave them hope. >>> She noted that Covid policymakers might have been better served if there >>> had been people assigned to act as devils advocates in internal
deliberations.
Lee and Macedo are not natural scientists or public health
professionals, they emphasize, and their book is about failures in
public deliberation over Covid-19, rather than a prescription for
managing pandemics.
But they do wade into the debate about Covid-19s origin, arguing that
the lab leak hypothesis that Covid-19 accidentally leaked from the
Wuhan Institute of Virology, rather than spontaneously leaping from
animals to humans was unfairly dismissed.
The Wuhan Institute studied coronaviruses similar to the one responsible >>> for Covid-19, had a documented history of safety breaches, was located
near the outbreak, and is known to have experimented on viruses using
controversial gain-of-function methods funded by the US, which involve >>> mutating pathogens to see what they might look like in a more advanced
or dangerous form.
If policymakers had been more honest with the public about these
uncertainties, I think they would have maintained public trust better
Perhaps because Trump had fanned racial paranoia by calling Covid-19 the >>> China virus and rightwing influencers were spreading the notion that
it had been deliberately engineered and unleashed on the world by China, >>> many scientists, public health experts and journalists reacted by
framing the idea of a lab leak even an accidental one as an
offensive conspiracy theory. Dr Anthony Fauci and other top public
health figures were evasive or in some cases dishonest about the
possibility of a lab leak, Macedo and Lee say, as well as the fact that
a US non-profit funded by the National Institutes of Health allegedly
funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute.
Since then, though, the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have
cautiously endorsed the lab leak theory, and the discourse around Covid
has softened somewhat. The economist Emily Oster sparked immense
backlash by arguing against school closures in 2020. Now publications
such as New York Magazine and the New York Times have acknowledged the
plausibility of the lab leak hypothesis, for example, and there is
growing consensus that school closures hurt many children.
The reception to In Covids Wake has been more positive than Macedo and
Lee expected perhaps a sign that some of their arguments have
penetrated the mainstream, if not that weve gotten better as a society
at talking about difficult things. The reception of the book has been
much less controversial [and] contentious than we expected, Macedo said. >>>
cashiers putting groceries in shopping bags
Disposable: what Covid-19 did to those who couldnt afford to fight the
virus
Read more
Yet the wounds fester and debates continue. Some readers of the New York >>> Times were furious when The Daily, the newspapers flagship podcast,
recently interviewed them, with subscribers arguing that the episode was >>> not sufficiently critical of their stance. And some coverage of the book >>> has criticized it for underplaying the danger of the disease.
Macedo and Lee said that a few of their colleagues have expressed
concern that their critique could fuel political attacks on science a
worry that crossed their minds too. Our response is that the best way
to refute criticisms that science and universities have been politicized >>> is to be open to criticism and willing to engage in self-criticism,
Macedo said.
We need to make sure these institutions are in the best possible
working order to face the challenges ahead. And we think thats by being >>> honest, not by covering over mistakes or being unwilling to face up to
hard questions.
In the interim, we are 100% prepared/protected in the "full armor of
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use Apostle Paul's
secret (Philippians 4:12). Though masking is less protective, it helps
us avoid the appearance of doing the evil of spreading airborne
pathogens while there are people getting sick because of not being
100% protected. It is written that we're to "abstain from **all**
appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22 w/**emphasis**).
Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8 ) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the US & elsewhere is by
rapidly (i.e. use the "Rapid COVID-19 Test" ) finding out at any given
moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
"convince it forward" (John 15:12) for them to call their doctor and
self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic.
Thus, we're hoping for the best while preparing for the worse-case
scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron,
Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations
combining via slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like "Deltamicron"
that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no
longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry (
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/6ZoE95d-VKc/m/14vVZoyOBgAJ >> ) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
I am wonderfully hungry!
Michael Ejercito wrote:https://postimg.cc/mhpmTPQz
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Michael Ejercito wrote:
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Subject: The LORD says "Blessed are you who hunger now ..."
Shame on andrew, look at his red face.
He is trying to pull a fast one. His scripture bit is found among these:
'14 Bible verses about Spiritual Hunger'
Psalms
81:10 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: >open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.
Proverbs
13:25 The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, But the stomach of >the wicked is in need.
Joel
2:26 And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of
the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my
people shall never be ashamed.
Psalms
107 For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.
Acts
14:17 "Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by >giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying
your hearts with food and gladness."
someone eternally condemned & ever more cursed by GOD perseverated:
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Subject: a very very very simple definition of sin ...
Does andrew's "definition" agree with scripture? Let's see in 1 John:
John wrote this to christians. The greek grammer (sic) speaks of an ongoing >> status. He includes himself in that status.
1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us.
1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, >> and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is >> not in us.
<FLUSH GOOK RAMBLING>
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Subject: The LORD says "Blessed are you who hunger now ..."
Shame on andrew, look at his red face.
He is trying to pull a fast one. His scripture bit is found among these:
'14 Bible verses about Spiritual Hunger'
Psalms
81:10 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: >open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.
Proverbs
13:25 The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, But the stomach of >the wicked is in need.
Joel
2:26 And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of
the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my
people shall never be ashamed.
Psalms
107 For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.
Acts
14:17 "Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by >giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying
your hearts with food and gladness."
someone eternally condemned & ever more cursed by GOD perseverated:
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Subject: a very very very simple definition of sin ...
Does andrew's "definition" agree with scripture? Let's see in 1 John:
John wrote this to christians. The greek grammer (sic) speaks of an ongoing >> status. He includes himself in that status.
1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us.
1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, >> and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is >> not in us.
On Sun, 6 Apr 2025 20:13:32 -0700, Michael Ejercito
<MEjercit@HotMail.com> wrote:
<FLUSH GOOK RAMBLING>
"So far as the Jews are concerned, they do not want to be placed in comfortable buildings. They actually prefer to live as many to a room
as possible. They have no conception of sanitation, hygiene or decency
and are, as you know, the same sub-human types that we saw in the
internment camps."
- U.S. General George S. Patton in a letter 4 October 1945 and
addressed to former aide Lt. Col. Charles R. Codman
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