Yes, I’m back 😊 You’ve hit on a subject I’ve spent too many hours investigating and you asked for convincing evidence. To begin, I agree that we must be responsible citizens. Responsibility requires us to learn how to separate our feelings about issues from facts and outcomes. I’m not saying that we should ignore our core values, but rather develop skills to face head on our very human ability to be wrong. Given that the current media encourages confirmation bias (both sides) by making facts fungible and only providing one-sided arguments, it isn’t an easy matter to determine truth, but I’ll start with a fact: every policy decision has an outcome, and normally several outcomes over time. If we fail to consider the broader view, second and third order impacts, we may hurt more people than we help. Such is the case with COVID. The combination of fear and censorship during the pandemic was a deadly brew. Obviously, we can’t always know in advance what will happen, but at a minimum, we should be allowed to hear dissenting opinion when it comes to science/health because sometimes the other guy is right. It’s one of the many reasons freedom of speech is included in the constitution.
1. The Great Barrington Declaration Great Barrington Declaration (gbdeclaration.org) was censored. A group of epidemiologists and public health scientists, some from prestigious research institutions, proposed that our COVID response should be targeted. They thought mass lockdowns would be ineffective and posed secondary risks especially for the young and healthy. Yet, we locked kids out of schools, some for as long as two years. I won’t address all the impacts of school closures because I’m relatively certain most of us are aware of the resulting learning decline and mental health issues. Please check out this chart from the CDC on death rates by age CDC COVID Data Tracker: Trends in Cases and Deaths by Race/Ethnicity, Age, and Sex and A Closer Look at the Covid Mortality Rate ⋆ Brownstone Institute. Notice the death rate for children was nearly zero up to almost 30. The big impact was 75+. I had a liberal relative who argued that kids were dying in droves from COVID. I told her that’s not true and to check out the CDC website. She didn’t mention the subject again. What she should have said was you are right, and I am wrong. Admitting you are personally wrong is the first step in opening your mind and looking at yourself in the mirror. I want to add, no childhood death is ever okay, be it from COVID or suicide, but we must always consider the full spectrum of risks. Also, Dr. Bhattacharya, one of the Great Barrington docs, is suing the government over censorship and he is winning up to the 5th circuit. It may go to the Supreme Court.
2. Masks. Where to begin. Studies from around the world which used formalized scientific methods show that cloth masks had almost no benefit, surgical masks had marginal benefit, and M95’s were somewhat better but were not close to fully protective. A virus is smaller than the weaves of both cloth and surgical masks and those type masks also release aerosols through gaps at the nose and chin. My common sense tells me if I have COVID and sneeze, any kind of mask will prevent some of the bad stuff from jetting out to others. Sadly, more than once I’ve seen folks pull their masks down to sneeze…seriously? Anyway, I doubt that the masks hurt anyone other than kids learning visual cues, wildlife who swallow discarded masks, and claustrophobics like me who felt blind and mute while wearing one. One other category that is worthy of consideration is those most vulnerable. They were made to believe masks protected them, which they didn’t. Is it possible we placed those people most likely to experience serious COVID in danger by allowing them to believe the mask would protect them?
3. Lockdowns. The success of lockdowns is hard to measure unless you compare COVID illness and deaths between states and countries. Even then it’s sometimes an apples and oranges comparison because of differing definitions of what comprised a COVID death and the level of testing which occurred to measure illness. As an example, the U.S. standard for a COVID death was any death which occurred when a patient tested positive, no matter other illness or injury. Some places around the world used only those deaths which concluded COVID was the primary cause. There were a couple of data analysis conducted by Pew Research and the Brownstone Research Institute which looked at a comparison of results between countries and states and they concluded there was no correlation between the length and severity of lockdowns and resulting Covid death. I’ve looked everywhere for these comparisons and can’t find them now. Used to have them on my desktop but I got tired of thinking about it and deleted them. I will say this, excess deaths, those over the normal baseline, is probably the best measure of what COVID the disease, and COVID policy wrought—unfortunately you can only see those results well after the fact. Sweden, the only country in Europe which did not mandate masks or lockdowns has the best excess death stats in Europe No-Lockdown Sweden Seemingly Tied for Lowest All-Causes Mortality in OECD Since COVID Arrived (reason.com) . Could be many other factors which accounted for Sweden’s success, but still, worth looking at success. Island states and countries also had good results because they could deny entry. Not really a possibility for most of the world.
4. Vaccines. Here’s the things I know from data: The original immunization helped vulnerable folks survive the Delta Variant. The vaccines do not prevent you from getting or spreading COVID and they don’t last very long. Some people, particularly young men, have heart related problems from the vaccine and there have been deaths. Two other things which should have been intuitively obvious at the beginning of the pandemic but were denied is that natural immunity is as good or better than the vaccine (there’s a reason there are 7.5 billion humans on Earth) and you are more likely to catch it indoors than outside. I think it was criminal to fire younger healthy people who didn’t want to take the vaccine or if someone had already contracted and survived COVID. My personal experience (I’m healthy 69) was that I took the 2 shot series and one booster. Two months after the booster I got COVID and then two months after that again. I’ve never been sick twice like that so close together. My opinion, and it is only that, is the vaccine messed with my immune system. Won’t be taking more. BTW, most people must agree because the number of vaccines administered currently is a tiny fraction of the population.
Bottom line: Censorship of dissenting views can be as harmful as conspiracy theories. I prefer to hear everything, supported by numbers and common sense and then make my own decision. I have that right as a free citizen and fully understand I will bear the consequences of my decisions. All it takes is for one good scientist to be right. We allowed fear and division to guide us during COVID. Not unusual, but not the best approach.
Censorship of dissenting views doesn’t help us because there are almost no unbiased human beings—at least, I don’t know any. Even scientists who want to prove their theories are often biased.
Back to your original article. How do we open our minds? My opinion, begin with your personal life and admit when you’ve been wrong. Practice makes perfect. Be willing to listen to different views even if they make you angry or uncomfortable—don’t just tune out or walk away. Read many different points of view. Don’t believe whole cloth anything you read without considering evidence, data, common sense, and what your eyes tell you. Check other sources with a different point of view! Not a perfect approach, but I think it would help.
And no, I am not a scientist. I am a math girl though and love to peruse data for answers.
Thank you for this AWESOME response, Nancy! I cut and pasted it to a document and saved it on my desktop so I can go back to it. I appreciate you taking the time and pointing me in a few good directions.
I do remember both WHO & the CDC came under fire for not always being good sources - I can't remember why now - but I remember sort of lowering them a bit in my head.
One thing that complicates matters is the degradation in the last few decades of journalist integrity and responsibility. That's a long rant right there that I don't have time for but it's really getting hard to trust *any* of them anymore. Plus partisanship and toxic 'woke' 'social justice' ideology have permeated so many levels of society that you don't know who to trust anymore. Plenty of doctors, scientists, and so-called 'scientific' periodicals support the science-free 'gender affirming care' (medical) for children and that has also worked to degrade what was once more expert credibility.
So I hear what you say about 'dissenting views' but it can truly be hard to figure out who knows what they're talking about and who's blowing smoke up your ass ;)
Thanks so much for this. This is so much excellent information to start with!
Sadly, I start with the assumption that most journalists are blowing at least some smoke up my ass. Also, I too am biased. I'm one of those people who wanted to leave the house even more when told to lock down...there's that.
Yes, I’m back 😊 You’ve hit on a subject I’ve spent too many hours investigating and you asked for convincing evidence. To begin, I agree that we must be responsible citizens. Responsibility requires us to learn how to separate our feelings about issues from facts and outcomes. I’m not saying that we should ignore our core values, but rather develop skills to face head on our very human ability to be wrong. Given that the current media encourages confirmation bias (both sides) by making facts fungible and only providing one-sided arguments, it isn’t an easy matter to determine truth, but I’ll start with a fact: every policy decision has an outcome, and normally several outcomes over time. If we fail to consider the broader view, second and third order impacts, we may hurt more people than we help. Such is the case with COVID. The combination of fear and censorship during the pandemic was a deadly brew. Obviously, we can’t always know in advance what will happen, but at a minimum, we should be allowed to hear dissenting opinion when it comes to science/health because sometimes the other guy is right. It’s one of the many reasons freedom of speech is included in the constitution.
1. The Great Barrington Declaration Great Barrington Declaration (gbdeclaration.org) was censored. A group of epidemiologists and public health scientists, some from prestigious research institutions, proposed that our COVID response should be targeted. They thought mass lockdowns would be ineffective and posed secondary risks especially for the young and healthy. Yet, we locked kids out of schools, some for as long as two years. I won’t address all the impacts of school closures because I’m relatively certain most of us are aware of the resulting learning decline and mental health issues. Please check out this chart from the CDC on death rates by age CDC COVID Data Tracker: Trends in Cases and Deaths by Race/Ethnicity, Age, and Sex and A Closer Look at the Covid Mortality Rate ⋆ Brownstone Institute. Notice the death rate for children was nearly zero up to almost 30. The big impact was 75+. I had a liberal relative who argued that kids were dying in droves from COVID. I told her that’s not true and to check out the CDC website. She didn’t mention the subject again. What she should have said was you are right, and I am wrong. Admitting you are personally wrong is the first step in opening your mind and looking at yourself in the mirror. I want to add, no childhood death is ever okay, be it from COVID or suicide, but we must always consider the full spectrum of risks. Also, Dr. Bhattacharya, one of the Great Barrington docs, is suing the government over censorship and he is winning up to the 5th circuit. It may go to the Supreme Court.
2. Masks. Where to begin. Studies from around the world which used formalized scientific methods show that cloth masks had almost no benefit, surgical masks had marginal benefit, and M95’s were somewhat better but were not close to fully protective. A virus is smaller than the weaves of both cloth and surgical masks and those type masks also release aerosols through gaps at the nose and chin. My common sense tells me if I have COVID and sneeze, any kind of mask will prevent some of the bad stuff from jetting out to others. Sadly, more than once I’ve seen folks pull their masks down to sneeze…seriously? Anyway, I doubt that the masks hurt anyone other than kids learning visual cues, wildlife who swallow discarded masks, and claustrophobics like me who felt blind and mute while wearing one. One other category that is worthy of consideration is those most vulnerable. They were made to believe masks protected them, which they didn’t. Is it possible we placed those people most likely to experience serious COVID in danger by allowing them to believe the mask would protect them?
3. Lockdowns. The success of lockdowns is hard to measure unless you compare COVID illness and deaths between states and countries. Even then it’s sometimes an apples and oranges comparison because of differing definitions of what comprised a COVID death and the level of testing which occurred to measure illness. As an example, the U.S. standard for a COVID death was any death which occurred when a patient tested positive, no matter other illness or injury. Some places around the world used only those deaths which concluded COVID was the primary cause. There were a couple of data analysis conducted by Pew Research and the Brownstone Research Institute which looked at a comparison of results between countries and states and they concluded there was no correlation between the length and severity of lockdowns and resulting Covid death. I’ve looked everywhere for these comparisons and can’t find them now. Used to have them on my desktop but I got tired of thinking about it and deleted them. I will say this, excess deaths, those over the normal baseline, is probably the best measure of what COVID the disease, and COVID policy wrought—unfortunately you can only see those results well after the fact. Sweden, the only country in Europe which did not mandate masks or lockdowns has the best excess death stats in Europe No-Lockdown Sweden Seemingly Tied for Lowest All-Causes Mortality in OECD Since COVID Arrived (reason.com) . Could be many other factors which accounted for Sweden’s success, but still, worth looking at success. Island states and countries also had good results because they could deny entry. Not really a possibility for most of the world.
4. Vaccines. Here’s the things I know from data: The original immunization helped vulnerable folks survive the Delta Variant. The vaccines do not prevent you from getting or spreading COVID and they don’t last very long. Some people, particularly young men, have heart related problems from the vaccine and there have been deaths. Two other things which should have been intuitively obvious at the beginning of the pandemic but were denied is that natural immunity is as good or better than the vaccine (there’s a reason there are 7.5 billion humans on Earth) and you are more likely to catch it indoors than outside. I think it was criminal to fire younger healthy people who didn’t want to take the vaccine or if someone had already contracted and survived COVID. My personal experience (I’m healthy 69) was that I took the 2 shot series and one booster. Two months after the booster I got COVID and then two months after that again. I’ve never been sick twice like that so close together. My opinion, and it is only that, is the vaccine messed with my immune system. Won’t be taking more. BTW, most people must agree because the number of vaccines administered currently is a tiny fraction of the population.
Bottom line: Censorship of dissenting views can be as harmful as conspiracy theories. I prefer to hear everything, supported by numbers and common sense and then make my own decision. I have that right as a free citizen and fully understand I will bear the consequences of my decisions. All it takes is for one good scientist to be right. We allowed fear and division to guide us during COVID. Not unusual, but not the best approach.
Censorship of dissenting views doesn’t help us because there are almost no unbiased human beings—at least, I don’t know any. Even scientists who want to prove their theories are often biased.
Back to your original article. How do we open our minds? My opinion, begin with your personal life and admit when you’ve been wrong. Practice makes perfect. Be willing to listen to different views even if they make you angry or uncomfortable—don’t just tune out or walk away. Read many different points of view. Don’t believe whole cloth anything you read without considering evidence, data, common sense, and what your eyes tell you. Check other sources with a different point of view! Not a perfect approach, but I think it would help.
And no, I am not a scientist. I am a math girl though and love to peruse data for answers.
Thank you for this AWESOME response, Nancy! I cut and pasted it to a document and saved it on my desktop so I can go back to it. I appreciate you taking the time and pointing me in a few good directions.
I do remember both WHO & the CDC came under fire for not always being good sources - I can't remember why now - but I remember sort of lowering them a bit in my head.
One thing that complicates matters is the degradation in the last few decades of journalist integrity and responsibility. That's a long rant right there that I don't have time for but it's really getting hard to trust *any* of them anymore. Plus partisanship and toxic 'woke' 'social justice' ideology have permeated so many levels of society that you don't know who to trust anymore. Plenty of doctors, scientists, and so-called 'scientific' periodicals support the science-free 'gender affirming care' (medical) for children and that has also worked to degrade what was once more expert credibility.
So I hear what you say about 'dissenting views' but it can truly be hard to figure out who knows what they're talking about and who's blowing smoke up your ass ;)
Thanks so much for this. This is so much excellent information to start with!
Sadly, I start with the assumption that most journalists are blowing at least some smoke up my ass. Also, I too am biased. I'm one of those people who wanted to leave the house even more when told to lock down...there's that.