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This is a thread for tracking disease experts' assessments of pandemic policies.
I'm converging on a theory where 1) experts and politicians defaulted to magical thinking on the virus because way more smart people than I would have imagined could only conceive of major pandemics as something that happened in past eras. This isn't the interesting piece.
More on that later. The main thing is that in February, western leaders and experts understood the severity, but convinced themselves it would burn out before reaching their own countries, though they had not stopped flights. This was probably what Trump was hoping for.
2) This awkward silence created a vacuum, but it took a while for people to notice. In the U.S., politicians and media were absorbed by impeachment and DNC primary stuff. ~March 15, the "advice" void was rapidly filled. The experts were swapped out for "experts."
3) The difference between the two is illustrated by this article. At first glance, they seem in complete agreement. What they say is nearly identical. Yet their *advice* totally diverges. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html
The opening paragraphs should set off some alarm bells. Why was this seemingly common sense idea only seriously raised 14 years ago? Why would this discussion not have taken place prior to Bush's request? And you can't talk about a single plan for "contagious disease" outbreaks.
The answer is that this *had* been discussed--but, as in 2020, the answers weren't what leaders wanted to hear. Bush freaked out about the 1918 flu because he saw grasped the most significant aspect of it: containment did not appear possible.
Does this sound like a normal "expert advice" gathering process? There is zero mention of anyone with expertise in disease or pandemics. Why was studying 1918 an "unexpected detour"? Why aren't they finding support outside of high schools?
Public health experts were not impressed, but Bush wanted them to "keep at it." Everyone here was trying to do the right thing, but there was no "science" to follow! Think about who was offering advice to Trump early on: China hawks.
"To develop ideas..." Bush's instincts were right on this (although possibly wrong about optimal forest fire policy): early detection of new respiratory viruses (flu or corona) was crucial. This was well-understood by experts, which the speech (read it) acknowledges.
This is what I mean by swapping experts for "experts." "Experts" are chosen for a pro-action bias and work backwards from a supposed "solution," rather than starting with the problem. They are often brilliant, accomplished people who are real experts *in other areas.*
???? This would be questionable enough if Dr. Glass was hyping his *own* model! "Intrigued"?
This isn't how any of this works! What "contagious disease" were they using as a model? It's a nonsensical claim without more information. And *all* people are a perfect vehicle for contagious disease--why are we using nuclear weapon equations to calculate common sense concepts?
"Amazed"!
Notice how the logic just skips a few steps here. All of a sudden, we have no choice but to include school closures in our plan, and the government is committed to social distancing. All of this without reference to the characteristics of the contagious disease!
Notice how the logic just skips a few steps here. All of a sudden, we have no choice but to include school closures in our plan, and the government is committed to social distancing. All of this without reference to the characteristics of the contagious disease!
I haven't read the paper yet, so I don't know what time frame they used to assess this, or the data quality. But it is nothing like treating a heart attack patient! (Also, poor communication on these policies caused people to delay treatment and die of heart attacks.)
The point of this thread is not to pick sides, but to demonstrate that actual experts do *not* appear to have advised social distancing. These decisions may have made sense in context, but were misapplied somewhere along the line. Laura was just doing a school project!
This is not intended as a case against the concept of social distancing. I think even China-style lockdown proponents can see that something odd happened here and we might want to be a bit more wary of certain claims:
So it appears that the CDC did *not* advise this--Bush's people did. Last point: incredibly, after all that, the people who wrote the plan don't even think their advice was followed! They seem freaked out.
