This is good work – the list of absurd comments particularly eye-catching. To me almost all the types of actors of importance – including the scientists, you don't mention daszak – seem covered in disgrace.
On scientists in general I do think they try to seek our the truth and evidence. That doesn’t mean they are not myopic, biased or conflicted. I think scientists acted far better than politicians. Although they were of course not always right. But who is?
1 ) Masks ( I mean cloth and surgical ) - have a VERY mixed set of reviews. Before the pandemic they showed almost zero benefit. During the pandemic there was a huge push for them - to the censoring of anyone who suggested that they were NOT a benefit ( cloth and surgical ) - Now in some cases people were suggesting that they were ineffective and so people should not even bother wearing them. I feel this was incorrect. It was that they were so ineffective that people should stay away from one another UNLESS they had a viable GOOD mask ( n95 etc ).
2 ) Things are still not better now. Places with strict lockdowns/masking requirements are not faring better than many other places ( you can choose winner and losers across the board on either side )
3 ) We still don't understand the Vaccine - which is effective at slowing the rate of spread of Covid-19. How long will the booster last? Why does it seem more effective to get vaccinated after having had Covid? etc and so on.
4 ) The WHO is political. It is why I disagree with being part of it. Just saying. They literally politicize science.
5 ) What are the long term effects of these vaccines? <shrug> this does not mean that the results will not show that they are not benign and far better than death. BUT... we don't know. We believe they should be fine. That is part of the issue with vaccine hesitancy. Instead of saying - "We do not know all the long term effects these vaccine may have, however we do know that it slows the Covid spread by a large degree. We do not know how long the potency lasts, but hopefully if there is a broad enough adoption it will slow the growth." Nope, instead it was "Very Safe" well word choice matters. when I hear very, I hear - not completely safe. Then I have to start making a cost benefit analysis. Do I give it to my children if it is not NEARLY 100% safe? As a parent I am fine taking a vaccine that has not been around for a while to see what it does to me ( I had a bad reaction but I am told that is atypical but we don't have all the data for that either, my case to my knowledge, has not been reported to VAERS because the system is overwhelmed and who's responsibility is it ANYWAY the patient? the doctor? they don't know. )
The issue with politics is that science is a process. We still do not have all the answers. I expect a post-mortum on masks to show that cloth masks were close to worthless. That Surgical masks slightly better. That catching Covid young will probably be worth more than the vaccine as far as long term anti body and t-cell reaction to the virus in the future. That vaccination - while a great tool - should have taken a second seat to REAL therapeutics.
Covid-19 has become or will shortly become an endemic. What it has really taught me is that public policy does not know what to do either once the virus becomes wide spread enough. We concentrated on a vaccine rather than on a therapeutic - which was a mistake - and that we have allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to die regardless of who is in 'office'.
A lot to chew on there, thanks for your thoughts. One response only to your last point. We had to do both vaccines and therapeutics--and we set out to do both.
Now it may seem like a great deal of progress but of the 11 EUA, seven were by October 2020 - and mostly under pressure from Mr. Trump. In a whole year we have managed to authorize an additional ( as far as EUA ) four of them.
Not only that but almost ALL of them ( until recently, hopefully, in real world tests ) have been widely recognized as ineffective ( please note remdesivir - due mostly to its low stability in plasma and tendency to damage other organs in human use ).
Let me revise my statement from earlier. We have ineffectively managed the ability to quickly create therapeutics in comparison to vaccines.
I fear this is due to the processes put into place for therapeutics versus the bar for vaccination.
Let me switch it over like this. If wearing masks ( cloth masks ) decreased the chance of death by 1% should we do it? The answer is of course. YES.
Yet if you look at some of the therapeutics they did far better than this in multiple clinical trials ( with few side effects ) and yet were not authorized as EUA . Why? Because we set the statistical bar so high when it comes to therapeutics in order to overcome bias versus placebo. If your outcomes are consistently 5% better in several trials, even if it is not statistically a game changer that would have, to date, saved almost 40,000 lives ( yes armchair math )
To your point we did work on therapeutics. My point that I will reiterate again is that we did NOT seriously undertake therapeutics with the correct mindset of staving off death and that vaccination received undue allowance and speed.
Hence my earlier statement. We concentrated on the vaccine rather than on therapeutics. I am not saying we did not attempt both I am suggesting we created lower barriers to entry for one versus the other.
This is not to point fingers but to perhaps, as we move forward, revise and streamline real clinical trials quickly and with an eye creating a more effective reporting system so that we have a greater modality of access to create REAL solutions quickly.
"If vaccines were a priority, wasn’t that correct because you don’t wan people to have to get sick at all and then have to treat?"
What if the vaccines didn't work to eliminate covid? Then we would need treatments and many have been found effective but were discouraged in favor of the vaccine. This resulted in the double whammy of unnecessary deaths, perhaps in the millions, and widespread and justified distrust of the public health authorities.
Hydroxychloroquine has been routinely given as a malaria prophylaxis for decades and is extremely safe. I took chloroquine for 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines 1977-1979. It was routinely given to everybody and hydroxychloroquine is an even safer variant of the compound.
I suggest this article as one indicator as to why people distrust the scientitic establishment: The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill - https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/. It describes the fatal errors made by the CDC and WHO in reporting the way in which covid is transmitted., with the correct mechanism only being acknowledged in spring 2021.
COVID 19 happened to break out where the Wuhan Institute of Virology is, a lab where Chinese researchers had housed the closest wild relative from caves 1000 miles away and do gain of function research and people had warned this could happen and the labs were known to have inadequate safety procedures and data was destroyed and a cover up took place blaming Trump for a racist conspiracy theory (article in Lancet among others).
Trump was more on the right side of these issues than the scientific establishment, in my understanding. He's generally a narcissist and pathological liar. Unfortunately, the opposition seems to have thought it a good idea to attack fire with fire.
3 or 4 years ago Barry and Honey Sherman from Ontario Canada, were murdered in their home and all the cameras in and outside the house did not catch anything (amazing). They owned a pharmaceutical company. They were producing hydroxychloroquine, a lab in Taiwan caught fire and it also was producing hydroxychloroquine. I believe, Pfizer and the other drug companies wanted to make the money from their vaccine and had the Shermans killed. Look how many billions of dollars those companies are making and whom are getting the profits, the share holders and who are the share holds, the elite. If the Shermans were making hydroxychloroquine, a few years before covid came out, they and other people knew it was going to be let out into the world. Just look how fast a vaccine was produced. They already had the vaccine ready before hand. How can a vaccine be made so fast. It takes years to perfect.
I think there may be another important, non-biological aspect to the wearing (or not) of masks. If I encounter anyone in an enclosed public space who is not wearing one, I prefer to assume that – the ‘medically exempt’ notwithstanding – they don’t care whether or not they infect me. So, they have conveniently flagged their attitude and marked themselves as someone to be avoided. I don’t mean this to sound flippant; I really think it’s a relevant factor.
Or maybe all those hundreds of (mainly young) un-masked people thronging around the local mall last weekend – as if the pandemic were just a tiresome Thing Of The Past – are just far better informed than I am.
Amazing work, excellent information, sources and analysis,
This is good work – the list of absurd comments particularly eye-catching. To me almost all the types of actors of importance – including the scientists, you don't mention daszak – seem covered in disgrace.
On scientists in general I do think they try to seek our the truth and evidence. That doesn’t mean they are not myopic, biased or conflicted. I think scientists acted far better than politicians. Although they were of course not always right. But who is?
There needs to be more writing on this topic
An excellent article, Natasha.
You highlight the, generally, poor quality of political leadership we are all dependant on. Depressing.
Thank you!
Hmmmm... so here in are a few thoughts.
1 ) Masks ( I mean cloth and surgical ) - have a VERY mixed set of reviews. Before the pandemic they showed almost zero benefit. During the pandemic there was a huge push for them - to the censoring of anyone who suggested that they were NOT a benefit ( cloth and surgical ) - Now in some cases people were suggesting that they were ineffective and so people should not even bother wearing them. I feel this was incorrect. It was that they were so ineffective that people should stay away from one another UNLESS they had a viable GOOD mask ( n95 etc ).
2 ) Things are still not better now. Places with strict lockdowns/masking requirements are not faring better than many other places ( you can choose winner and losers across the board on either side )
3 ) We still don't understand the Vaccine - which is effective at slowing the rate of spread of Covid-19. How long will the booster last? Why does it seem more effective to get vaccinated after having had Covid? etc and so on.
4 ) The WHO is political. It is why I disagree with being part of it. Just saying. They literally politicize science.
5 ) What are the long term effects of these vaccines? <shrug> this does not mean that the results will not show that they are not benign and far better than death. BUT... we don't know. We believe they should be fine. That is part of the issue with vaccine hesitancy. Instead of saying - "We do not know all the long term effects these vaccine may have, however we do know that it slows the Covid spread by a large degree. We do not know how long the potency lasts, but hopefully if there is a broad enough adoption it will slow the growth." Nope, instead it was "Very Safe" well word choice matters. when I hear very, I hear - not completely safe. Then I have to start making a cost benefit analysis. Do I give it to my children if it is not NEARLY 100% safe? As a parent I am fine taking a vaccine that has not been around for a while to see what it does to me ( I had a bad reaction but I am told that is atypical but we don't have all the data for that either, my case to my knowledge, has not been reported to VAERS because the system is overwhelmed and who's responsibility is it ANYWAY the patient? the doctor? they don't know. )
The issue with politics is that science is a process. We still do not have all the answers. I expect a post-mortum on masks to show that cloth masks were close to worthless. That Surgical masks slightly better. That catching Covid young will probably be worth more than the vaccine as far as long term anti body and t-cell reaction to the virus in the future. That vaccination - while a great tool - should have taken a second seat to REAL therapeutics.
Covid-19 has become or will shortly become an endemic. What it has really taught me is that public policy does not know what to do either once the virus becomes wide spread enough. We concentrated on a vaccine rather than on a therapeutic - which was a mistake - and that we have allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to die regardless of who is in 'office'.
A lot to chew on there, thanks for your thoughts. One response only to your last point. We had to do both vaccines and therapeutics--and we set out to do both.
P.S. I loved your article. My comments are simply thoughts lol.
:)
<sigh> you are correct about "what we set out to do".
See here https://www.fda.gov/media/136832/download
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/coronavirus-covid-19-drugs/coronavirus-treatment-acceleration-program-ctap
Now it may seem like a great deal of progress but of the 11 EUA, seven were by October 2020 - and mostly under pressure from Mr. Trump. In a whole year we have managed to authorize an additional ( as far as EUA ) four of them.
Not only that but almost ALL of them ( until recently, hopefully, in real world tests ) have been widely recognized as ineffective ( please note remdesivir - due mostly to its low stability in plasma and tendency to damage other organs in human use ).
Let me revise my statement from earlier. We have ineffectively managed the ability to quickly create therapeutics in comparison to vaccines.
I fear this is due to the processes put into place for therapeutics versus the bar for vaccination.
Let me switch it over like this. If wearing masks ( cloth masks ) decreased the chance of death by 1% should we do it? The answer is of course. YES.
Yet if you look at some of the therapeutics they did far better than this in multiple clinical trials ( with few side effects ) and yet were not authorized as EUA . Why? Because we set the statistical bar so high when it comes to therapeutics in order to overcome bias versus placebo. If your outcomes are consistently 5% better in several trials, even if it is not statistically a game changer that would have, to date, saved almost 40,000 lives ( yes armchair math )
To your point we did work on therapeutics. My point that I will reiterate again is that we did NOT seriously undertake therapeutics with the correct mindset of staving off death and that vaccination received undue allowance and speed.
Hence my earlier statement. We concentrated on the vaccine rather than on therapeutics. I am not saying we did not attempt both I am suggesting we created lower barriers to entry for one versus the other.
This is not to point fingers but to perhaps, as we move forward, revise and streamline real clinical trials quickly and with an eye creating a more effective reporting system so that we have a greater modality of access to create REAL solutions quickly.
If vaccines were a priority, wasn’t that correct because you don’t wan people to have to get sick at all and then have to treat?
"If vaccines were a priority, wasn’t that correct because you don’t wan people to have to get sick at all and then have to treat?"
What if the vaccines didn't work to eliminate covid? Then we would need treatments and many have been found effective but were discouraged in favor of the vaccine. This resulted in the double whammy of unnecessary deaths, perhaps in the millions, and widespread and justified distrust of the public health authorities.
Correct, Natasha. I'm with you.
Prevention is always preferable to cure.
This is an excellent article, but I'd like to recommend the one below for a rather different view of the WHO:
https://archive.ph/If1WN#selection-821.0-821.56
Hydroxychloroquine has been routinely given as a malaria prophylaxis for decades and is extremely safe. I took chloroquine for 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines 1977-1979. It was routinely given to everybody and hydroxychloroquine is an even safer variant of the compound.
I suggest this article as one indicator as to why people distrust the scientitic establishment: The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill - https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/. It describes the fatal errors made by the CDC and WHO in reporting the way in which covid is transmitted., with the correct mechanism only being acknowledged in spring 2021.
COVID 19 happened to break out where the Wuhan Institute of Virology is, a lab where Chinese researchers had housed the closest wild relative from caves 1000 miles away and do gain of function research and people had warned this could happen and the labs were known to have inadequate safety procedures and data was destroyed and a cover up took place blaming Trump for a racist conspiracy theory (article in Lancet among others).
Trump was more on the right side of these issues than the scientific establishment, in my understanding. He's generally a narcissist and pathological liar. Unfortunately, the opposition seems to have thought it a good idea to attack fire with fire.
3 or 4 years ago Barry and Honey Sherman from Ontario Canada, were murdered in their home and all the cameras in and outside the house did not catch anything (amazing). They owned a pharmaceutical company. They were producing hydroxychloroquine, a lab in Taiwan caught fire and it also was producing hydroxychloroquine. I believe, Pfizer and the other drug companies wanted to make the money from their vaccine and had the Shermans killed. Look how many billions of dollars those companies are making and whom are getting the profits, the share holders and who are the share holds, the elite. If the Shermans were making hydroxychloroquine, a few years before covid came out, they and other people knew it was going to be let out into the world. Just look how fast a vaccine was produced. They already had the vaccine ready before hand. How can a vaccine be made so fast. It takes years to perfect.
Admirably informative. Thank you.
I think there may be another important, non-biological aspect to the wearing (or not) of masks. If I encounter anyone in an enclosed public space who is not wearing one, I prefer to assume that – the ‘medically exempt’ notwithstanding – they don’t care whether or not they infect me. So, they have conveniently flagged their attitude and marked themselves as someone to be avoided. I don’t mean this to sound flippant; I really think it’s a relevant factor.
Or maybe all those hundreds of (mainly young) un-masked people thronging around the local mall last weekend – as if the pandemic were just a tiresome Thing Of The Past – are just far better informed than I am.