4 ms·

The further we get away from the pandemic, the less anyone will remember that it suddenly became the leading cause of death, or one of the leading causes of dea

The further we get away from the pandemic, the less anyone will remember that it suddenly became the leading cause of death, or one of the leading causes of death, in many countries. “Scandals” like this one will seem more significant than the fact that policymakers were acting on the imperative to keep even more people from dying. Confronted with the same circumstances and choices, I don’t think any armchair critic would have done any better. The per capita rate of sickness and death in U.S. states whose leaders boasted the loudest about having few or no restrictions whatsoever suggests that many, many more people would be dead if we had taken their advice. But the further we get away from the emergency period, the less any of this will matter. We won’t learn anything.

nhchris 4y ago
The scandal is not about whether the pandemic response was correct given the information they had, but their efforts to manipulate public perception.
- eastern 4y ago
  Most of all, it's about the attitude that the tone of the conversation reveals. Also, the behaviour of this very lot at the time, as was revealed later. They're mocking people, enjoying the absolute power that they have gained.
  - mbgerring 4y ago
    So I guess “absolute power” is when your temporary state of emergency, approved through the regular legislative process by duly elected officials, is allowed to expire, and the restrictions imposed by it are rolled back.
thunky 4y ago
> Confronted with the same circumstances and choices, I don’t think any armchair critic would have done any better Maybe not, but that doesn't make it out of bounds to be critical. > The per capita rate of sickness and death in U.S. states whose leaders boasted the loudest about having few or no restrictions I'm not sure it's so simple. NY stats are very close to FL. > We won’t learn anything. Exactly.
- mbgerring 4y ago
  Look again at NY and see when the preponderance of deaths happened. Right when the pandemic broke out, U.S. citizens were forced to come home from abroad, and many of them transited through airports in New York. If you recall the images from those airports at the time, people, many of whom were probably infected, were packed shoulder to shoulder. New York’s shelter in place restrictions weren’t in place at that point. New York City was slammed with a wave of sickness and death unparalleled anywhere else shortly afterwards. New York has been an outlier in the data the entire length of the pandemic for this reason. If you look at the totality of per-capita hospitalizations and deaths over the last several years, its obvious that shelter-in-place restrictions absolutely made a difference.
  - mbgerring 4y ago
    It’s wild how you can clearly see what I described here on a chart, but people are downvoting this comment.
    - thunky 4y ago
      I didn't downvote, but I think your comment doesn't object to the idea that it's just not simple to determine what policies worked. You could probably find an asterisk to put next to any state (based on age, density, data quality, etc, etc). And that's before you even try to measure the negative effects of lockdown against the positives in your analysis. I think it's important that every new policy is looked at critically, even if it was created under duress and with good intentions.
gray_charger 4y ago
How could we have ever known putting Covid patients in nursing homes with our most vulnerable population was a bad idea? https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/20-year-old-beating-suspect-was-moved-to-nursing-home-because-he-has-covid-19-says-father https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/20-year-old-beating... Who could have guessed that stopping all economic activity was not a sustainable solution to the pandemic? https://twitter.com/who/status/1316020010540625920 https://twitter.com/who/status/1316020010540625920 https://nypost.com/2020/11/29/nearly-one-third-of-ny-nj-small-businesses-closed-in-2020-report/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/29/nearly-one-third-of-ny-nj-smal... If you don't take this vaccine you and your family will starve on the cold streets. But the company that created it also has zero liability with it being emergency authorization and all. What, you have a better idea? https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/federal-vaccine-mandate.aspx https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acqu... Nobody warned us these things could be a bad idea. How could we have known? https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867?s=20 https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867?s=... Seriously, were you living under a rock? > "I don't think any armchair critic would have done any better." I think if we allowed a chimp to make decisions at random we could have gotten a better outcome.
- mbgerring 4y ago
  No, I lived in San Francisco, a city where we had reasonable restrictions in place in enough time to make a difference, because our policymakers remembered the plague years of AIDS and knew what to do. A lot of people who pretend to be smart fled the city during the pandemic, claiming, falsely, that it had become a lawless, post-apocalyptic nightmare. Early on in the pandemic, I participated in the COVID Tracking Project, which was the only reliable source of data on the pandemic in the US for almost a year. I was also a reporter, covering local politics and small business in San Francisco as the pandemic and the regulatory response unfolded. So, no, I wasn’t living under a rock, and in fact was closer to the action than most people.
worksonmine 4y ago
Probably going to get downvoted to hell but I'll take it. In my country the deaths were similar to a flu season we had 2-3 years earlier, and nobody batted an eye back then. Look at the numbers in your country yourself and you might see the same. Of course it's sad for anyone who lost someone but no point in exaggerating. Why has similar years not prompted the same reactions earlier? Does the tone in the messages tell you they acted on a bad pandemic, or that they had to blow it up to scare people? Honest question.
neverrroot 4y ago
While Corona was a major cause of deaths in the population up to Omicron, it wasn’t in general as bad as it was reported on the news and definitely not as bad as modeled/predicted(talking here about the majority of the population). A lot of errors occurred in reporting and collecting data, and this contributed decisively to those errors.

nhchris 4y ago

The scandal is not about whether the pandemic response was correct given the information they had, but their efforts to manipulate public perception.

eastern 4y ago
Most of all, it's about the attitude that the tone of the conversation reveals. Also, the behaviour of this very lot at the time, as was revealed later. They're mocking people, enjoying the absolute power that they have gained.
- mbgerring 4y ago
  So I guess “absolute power” is when your temporary state of emergency, approved through the regular legislative process by duly elected officials, is allowed to expire, and the restrictions imposed by it are rolled back.

thunky 4y ago

> Confronted with the same circumstances and choices, I don’t think any armchair critic would have done any better Maybe not, but that doesn't make it out of bounds to be critical. > The per capita rate of sickness and death in U.S. states whose leaders boasted the loudest about having few or no restrictions I'm not sure it's so simple. NY stats are very close to FL. > We won’t learn anything. Exactly.

mbgerring 4y ago
Look again at NY and see when the preponderance of deaths happened. Right when the pandemic broke out, U.S. citizens were forced to come home from abroad, and many of them transited through airports in New York. If you recall the images from those airports at the time, people, many of whom were probably infected, were packed shoulder to shoulder. New York’s shelter in place restrictions weren’t in place at that point. New York City was slammed with a wave of sickness and death unparalleled anywhere else shortly afterwards. New York has been an outlier in the data the entire length of the pandemic for this reason. If you look at the totality of per-capita hospitalizations and deaths over the last several years, its obvious that shelter-in-place restrictions absolutely made a difference.
- mbgerring 4y ago
  It’s wild how you can clearly see what I described here on a chart, but people are downvoting this comment.
  - thunky 4y ago
    I didn't downvote, but I think your comment doesn't object to the idea that it's just not simple to determine what policies worked. You could probably find an asterisk to put next to any state (based on age, density, data quality, etc, etc). And that's before you even try to measure the negative effects of lockdown against the positives in your analysis. I think it's important that every new policy is looked at critically, even if it was created under duress and with good intentions.

gray_charger 4y ago

How could we have ever known putting Covid patients in nursing homes with our most vulnerable population was a bad idea? https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/20-year-old-beating-suspect-was-moved-to-nursing-home-because-he-has-covid-19-says-father https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/20-year-old-beating... Who could have guessed that stopping all economic activity was not a sustainable solution to the pandemic? https://twitter.com/who/status/1316020010540625920 https://twitter.com/who/status/1316020010540625920 https://nypost.com/2020/11/29/nearly-one-third-of-ny-nj-small-businesses-closed-in-2020-report/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/29/nearly-one-third-of-ny-nj-smal... If you don't take this vaccine you and your family will starve on the cold streets. But the company that created it also has zero liability with it being emergency authorization and all. What, you have a better idea? https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/federal-vaccine-mandate.aspx https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acqu... Nobody warned us these things could be a bad idea. How could we have known? https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867?s=20 https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867?s=... Seriously, were you living under a rock? > "I don't think any armchair critic would have done any better." I think if we allowed a chimp to make decisions at random we could have gotten a better outcome.

mbgerring 4y ago
No, I lived in San Francisco, a city where we had reasonable restrictions in place in enough time to make a difference, because our policymakers remembered the plague years of AIDS and knew what to do. A lot of people who pretend to be smart fled the city during the pandemic, claiming, falsely, that it had become a lawless, post-apocalyptic nightmare. Early on in the pandemic, I participated in the COVID Tracking Project, which was the only reliable source of data on the pandemic in the US for almost a year. I was also a reporter, covering local politics and small business in San Francisco as the pandemic and the regulatory response unfolded. So, no, I wasn’t living under a rock, and in fact was closer to the action than most people.

worksonmine 4y ago

Probably going to get downvoted to hell but I'll take it. In my country the deaths were similar to a flu season we had 2-3 years earlier, and nobody batted an eye back then. Look at the numbers in your country yourself and you might see the same. Of course it's sad for anyone who lost someone but no point in exaggerating. Why has similar years not prompted the same reactions earlier? Does the tone in the messages tell you they acted on a bad pandemic, or that they had to blow it up to scare people? Honest question.

neverrroot 4y ago

While Corona was a major cause of deaths in the population up to Omicron, it wasn’t in general as bad as it was reported on the news and definitely not as bad as modeled/predicted(talking here about the majority of the population). A lot of errors occurred in reporting and collecting data, and this contributed decisively to those errors.