New COVID variant emerges, but will Americans mask up again?
By: USA TODAY
Anyone surprised?
What say ye?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
We're not starting at the same place we did when COVID-19 arrived in 2020. Americans barely trust any of our institutions anymore, so health care is not alone on the bottom rungs in our society.
Phil BoasArizona Republic
"We're at an inflection point," said CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
More and more public-health officials are dusting off their old face masks and encouraging Americans to do the same for the new BA.2.86 variant of COVID-19, he explained.
Hearing that, Meghan McCain went to social media and spoke for an entire nation: "Uh no, we ain't starting this s--- again."
McCain isn't some right-wing reactionary. She's not QAnon. She's not a wrapped-in-the-flag freedom marcher. On this issue she is very much mainstream.
Her point is that the COVID-19 endemic will be much different than the pandemic. Americans are a lot wiser now about this pathogen and the people who tried to manage it the last time around.
COVID tanked our trust in public health
That's important information if you're a doctor or public health official or epidemiologist.
We're not starting at the same place we did when COVID-19 arrived on our shores in January 2020.
The American people don't trust you.
Not the way we once did. Americans barely trust any of our institutions anymore, so health care is not alone on the bottom rungs in our society.
But in the past two years, confidence in health care officials has dropped 10 points from 44% to 34%, according to a Gallup tracking poll.
Trust in doctors, nurses won't be easily restored
In terms of trust, doctors and nurses used to occupy a high place in our society. But that's over and probably gone for a generation.
As the son of a pediatric radiologist, I say that with sadness, because I've long believed in the medical profession. Such faith was weaved into our family fabric.
No more. Not after what happened with COVID-19.
I also say this as someone not interested in settling scores over the pandemic. All of us went through this 100-year event together. We all got stuff right, and we all got stuff wrong, because these are complicated once-in-a-generation disruptors that are not easily understood in real time.
Public health officials, however, got so much wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic and asserted it with such confidence that they will not soon restore the trust they once enjoyed.
What's killing us?More young Americans are dying - and it's not COVID. Why aren't we searching for answers?
Fauci kept changing his tune on masks, COVID vaccines
You can begin with Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who began the pandemic telling the general public not to wear face masks.
Fauci was trying to preserve the short supply of surgical masks for health care professionals, but he would soon change his tune and advise Americans to mask up.
He did the same on herd immunity, changing his estimates throughout the pandemic. He began saying herd immunity would begin at about 60% to 70%, but by the end was saying 90%.
As reported in The New York Times in December 2020, Fauci admitted he fudged the truth: "Dr. Fauci said that weeks ago, he had hesitated to publicly raise his estimate because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.
"Now that some polls are showing that many more Americans are ready, even eager, for vaccines, he said he felt he could deliver the tough message that the return to normal might take longer than anticipated."
America locked down public schools
Even as Western Europe began to reopen its public schools, backed with new studies that public school children were far less susceptible to COVID-19 and its most harmful effects, the United States resisted.
Teachers unions in America stonewalled and delayed the return. When students did come back, they demanded students be masked.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was "file drawering" its own data showing face masks mandates for students had no statistically significant benefit, reported New York magazine, hardly a vessel of the MAGA right.
But it was the George Floyd protests of 2020 that really damaged the credibility of public health officials.
After spending weeks condemning conservative "freedom marchers" for causing super-spreader events with their outdoor protests, the greater portion of the medical establishment gave its blessing to left-wing political marchers protesting police brutality.
Some protests were deemed medically OK. Others weren't.
More than 1,300 epidemiologists and health workers signed a letter saying the social justice protests "must be supported," The Times reported: "As public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for Covid-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health."
Some epidemiologists wrestled with the contradiction afterwards.
"I certainly condemned the anti-lockdown protests at the time, and I'm not condemning the protests now, and I struggle with that," said Catherine Troisi, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. "I have a hard time articulating why that is OK."
Mark Lurie, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University, said, "Instinctively, many of us in public health feel a strong desire to act against accumulated generations of racial injustice. But we have to be honest: A few weeks before, we were criticizing protesters for arguing to open up the economy and saying that was dangerous behavior."
Like so many of our institutions, American public health had been captured by ideology. It was putting politics before the best evidence at the time.
Don't censure. Just give us the facts.
As we came to understand later, the threat to both sets of marchers was not particularly great.
"The C.D.C. vastly overstated the risks of outdoor spread of the virus, which (at least until the emergence of the Delta variant) appears to be closer to 0.1 percent than as high as 10 percent," noted New York Times columnist Bret Stephens in his July 27, 2021, column "COVID Misinformation Comes From the Top, Too."
As the BA.2.86 variant rears itself in America, public health is at a new starting point.
Without the trust of the American people, it is more important than ever that medical professionals tell the truth and not twist it to produce desired outcomes.
Don't try to censor pushback. Meet it with your best evidence.
Be honest. Be transparent.
That's the approach Meghan McCain's father used to call "straight talk."
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic, where this column first published. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com
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Oh boy,
The number one mistake that NIH and public health made was funding gain of function and then losing control of it.
Yes, that seems more obvious by the day. It is a virus that won't give up, keeps mutating and supposedly made an invisible jump from bat to human.
"Public health officials got so much wrong in the COVID-19 pandemic, and asserted it with such confidence, that Americans won't soon trust them again."
The American people won't tolerate mandatory masking or submit to lockdowns again. The only exception for me is if one will be required for a medical appointment.
You get enough dead bodies, and they sure will. It’s kind of amazing to me that it’s only been a few years and people have already forgotten how the sick were dying faster than we could bury them, and we didn’t yet understand how it was spreading.
That’s context.
The situation is very different now. We have a much stronger understanding of how it spreads, the dominant variants are not nearly as lethal, and we have tools for treating people when they do get sick.
So yeah, now, people wouldn’t tolerate those measures because they know they’re not necessary.
It all come down to what political party supported them. The George Floyd riots were supported by the left. So they were ok. A protest against lockdowns and masks supported by the right? These were condemned and deems "super spreader events".
Unfortunately we know that it will remain mired in politics and more people will be needlessly hurt by it.
Go to it Americans. Exercise your sacred personal rights and freedoms. After all, you need to make room for all those pesky migrants. There's still lots of vacant land in America for cemeteries. I understand that it's good for the environment if you don't use a casket. Just stay away from my son and his family in Milwaukee.
No one needs to tell us that.
No one needs to tell us to do that either. We will- and will still answer the call from our allies- and sometimes our enemies.
You mean like China did? Oh wait, China doesn't tolerate illegal immigration. For the US to make room for all of the illegals Brandon is allowing in we would have to be dying in the million(s). As in 10 plus million or more. Quick someone release a different disease variant that will cause a pandemic- we are running well behind quota on US citizen deaths!
There is always mandatory cremation. Maybe we can turn burning bodies into a fuel source? Doesn't seem like renewable energy is going to be able to meet our power demands of our ever growing population (including illegals).
Do you think all of the illegal immigrants will? You have seen what type of conditions they are detained in before they are released into the general public to do as they please. Talk about Covid breeding grounds. No mandatory Covid shots for them either- Brandon said so.
I have no idea what China did, I'm not Chinese but merely a guest here. However, it isn't easy for all those migrants to walk to China. Besides, with the extent that America badmouths China I can understand why it's not popular for immigration. I'm a Canadian and I know that Canada, which has around one tenth of the population of the USA, is seeking half a million immigrants per year.
If a food shortage happens, there's always the possibility of Soylent Green. Human bodies aren't poison, which was proven during WW2 when the Japanese soldiers ate the livers of captured American soldiers.
Guess you don't have many personal rights and freedoms in your chosen homeland. Don't forget your incompetent and malicious government created and then unleashed this deadly virus upon the planet.
I can do and do absolutely everything I want to do, and so does my wife and her family here, and so does absolutely everyone that I know or who I have ever known here. IMO maybe you have too much freedom and you misuse that freedom which just might be causing you some problems. It is not MY government. MY government is in Canada. I am not a citizen here but a mere guest who has to renew his visa every three years and have to make sure I don't break any laws or I could be deported. But then although I've spent time in about 17 different countries in my lifetime I never got into any trouble because I believe in the adage "When in Rome do as the Romans do." However THIS "incompetent and malicious" government has eradicated abject poverty and nobody sleeps on the streets or under bridges. How are YOUR 600,000 or so homeless doing these days? THIS "incompetent and malicious" government did not experience the ravages of inflation. Are your interest rates still being raised?
But then why did I even bother answering you. You don't respect your own present government so why should I bother with your criticism of anyone else's.
Oh, then everything is great. I'm sure slave owners say the same thing.
Meanwhile, slave labor still going on in China
Who cares about slaves when you can do what you want, right?
H IS "incompetent and malicious" government did not experience the ravages of inflation.
Lol. China can't even lie convincingly enough about their unemployment problem so they've just stopped reporting it.
More than 20% of young adults unemployed ..... Ouch
Why Many of China’s College Grads Are Becoming ‘Full-Time Children’
Everything's great!
First of all I would like to congratulate you for FINALLY discovering a way to reply to me without your getting a ticket for it, even though your criticism of China on a seed that is only about America is COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC, but no surprise to me that that is not being enforced here.
Did I say "everything is great"? I read over what I said and I didn't see it. I suppose putting words into someone's mouth is necessary when one has trouble making their point. So, you want to talk about "everything is great" then so can I. I could only find a couple stories about the daily shootings in America today, those that are reported, of course. Having a slow day there, eh? Lots of people soon going to be evicted when the controls are lifted? A little bit of racist things happening? Will a lot of your best stores close because of the shoplifting gangs? I'm as good as you at whataboutisms, aren't I?
Slave labour? Boy, America will come up with whatever misinformation and disinformation and unproved lies they possibly can to demonize, contain and pressure China. What's the reason? FEAR!!! - fear of being surpassed. So tell me, Sean, tell me about the agricultural workers, many of whom are migrants, that are America's slave labourers as I've read in your nation's reports. (Just a little more whataboutism back for "balance" (note my avatar).
It really is a problem that China has such a surfeit of highly educated, brilliant and talented youth these days that there aren't enough high level jobs for them. My first laugh of the day was when I read the words "full time children" in the headline you posted - oh, your media is SO good at promoting hatred of China. It's a problem I'll bet America wished it had. I'm sure though that that problem will be dealt with. After all, wouldn't it be a great story for your media if the government were to enslave them and force them to do menial agricultural, service industry jobs or put them in the military, you know the military that was not involved in any wars save for defending its own country nor invasions or forcible changes of other nation's leaders (is this sounding familiar?) for an awful long time.
Well, Sean, hope you are well and continue to post positive comments and articles.