3 Comments
Jul 28·edited Jul 28

Merrill:

As the study states, there were successes and failures with actions taken. States which the more aggressive actions appeared to have had greater success. I do not believe you or anyone will get a thorough agreement on anything restricting their activity.

I know retired Prof. Joel by us would agree with this:

“Vaccinations were incredibly important as were masks and social distancing. Maybe we should have realized faster than some (restrictions) were not ideal. There were cases where the balance should have been tilted in different ways. But this notion that these things were just harmful or ineffective? An objective look at the evidence does not support that view. As packages, the states that had stronger restrictions saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”

We hunkered down.

Expand full comment
founding

“Major limitations on social, business and school activities, on the other hand, did not reduce the death rates.” True, but only because we didn’t really try to target interventions.

The single, simplest, biggest risk factor for dying from COVID is age. As of 9/2023 (when the CDC stopped surveillance) about 1,480,000 Americans had died from COVID. Only 6,000 were age 25 or younger. About 103,000 were 25-54. That pattern was evident very early in the pandemic.

If we’d engineered a policy for 1) supporting isolation and support (wage protection, food delivery, work at home resources, etc) for those over 54 living in the community, 2) medical panels for identifying, younger, high risk people who also needed support, 3) strict but well established infection protection measures for nursing homes, prisons, etc. and 3) respirators when available, masks when respirators weren’t available, mandatory vaccination and physical distancing (NOT social distancing) for everyone we could’ve saved tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands more lives. That sort of policy would’ve required the type of political leadership that simply wasn’t available in 2020.

Tony, could you be more specific

Expand full comment

Wow Gooz, you are out of your freaking mind if you actually believe this regime garbage.

Expand full comment