Thank you for all you have done in the past few years. Not sure when I found you but you got me through the COVID pandemic. Please keep writing. Thank you again.
Katelyn your posts have given me hope since the Covid pandemic! Yes, we need to keep our eyes on the long game and not give up. Yes, dark days are ahead, however we cannot underestimate the resilience of the medical/scientific community. It may start with one patient, one county, one community, or one sane voice in government. This destructive force is, in reality, held together by a razor thin margin. Once cracks develop, it will shatter. Sadly, it may take 1-2 years! This means 1-2 years of networking, sharing, and putting out valid information via any channel possible. On a personal note, I spoke with a family in clinic last week who said: "We don't immunize our kids..." Using your data I neutrally spoke of the measles outbreak and the personal risks the kids in the room faced. I finally said: "Think about it, I respect your choices, and know we will always be available. We can keep a set aside just for you." A week later they came back for vaccines. This committed 'refuser' was actually a 'future vaccinator'. The right leaning, science suspicious, fringe community are NOT a uniform block. Perhaps they too are getting a bit skeptical.
Thank you for being civil and most importantly, neutral, with the parents. You left space for them to not feel ✨insert adjective here✨so that the parents COULD come back for vaccine services with no guilt, shame, blame, etc.
Stories like this - and others I’m sure will emerge from this period of thoughtless dismantlement of our Fed public health system - should be nurtured, carefully collected and circulated to serve as examples of effective and sensitive risk communication. They will be needed in the coming time when infectious illness re-emerges and poses a threat to all Americans.
Thanks for this comprehensive and informative update! Of relevance, I think, is the following segment from this evening's PBS News Hour about a newly published analysis of our response to the COVID crisis in 2020. The authors suggest that many measures put into place before the vaccines became available were unduly expensive and ineffective, and that those measures did a lot to polarize and poison the subsequent conversations: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/authors-of-in-covids-wake-on-their-criticism-of-the-governments-pandemic-response
I think you chose to show respect for your patients--their intelligence and love for their children, and because of that they trusted the information you gave them. I think your approach is paramount to succeeding--really that can be said in every area that is being challenged in our political arena. Bottom line people love their children and all their family members and want what is best for them. They are being bombarded by so many conflicting messages, but yours was heard!
Thanks for your insight and explanation of what we are loosing. If anything your analysis is too measured and polite. As a family doc with an MPH I have had the privilege of working with several local DPH over the years, primarily in well funded California counties. I would add a couple of observations:
1. Back before Medicare, clinical medicine had very little knowledge about chronic disease. DHEW (as the federal agency was known then) stepped in and had a whole Division of Chronic Disease. For example it prioritized and funded the many year Framingham Heart Study which provided foundational information about coronary artery disease. Yes RFKjr's priority on chronic disease and nutrition is important, but the public health system has not left these field lie fallow. And the new priority should not subtract basic resources from those PH activities which keep us alive to get old enough to have chronic diseases.
2. In my experience local DPHs run on a such a meager margin of resources, that when a problem or challenge arises, say a case of measles locally, staff have to be pulled from other basic responsibilities (which go undone) to deal with the issue at hand. The cutbacks will hamper full staffing and upgrades, but they will totally eliminate surge capacity and early warning systems.
Sadly the generations that have so successfully avoided challenges from common infectious diseases due to the quiet successes of PH, in their hubris, are putting us all at risk again. Nothing good can come of this.
Just came here to say: KEEP GOING. I know you are tired, angry, hopeless,....but your voice is one that we need. I have followed you since the beginning and you are the one piece of current event information that I can stomach these days. I appreciate you. You are strong. Keep fighting.
Being able to access online the scientists around the world active in the research areas surrounding COVID was literally lifesaving for our family. It was just so terrific to watch and benefit from their work - we were awed and so thankful. We learned SO MUCH and had and still have tremendous respect for all they did and still do. It’s devastating to watch their crucial work being dismantled. Dark days indeed.
Canada has a need for 44,000 doctors. I read about this early today in my first Canadian Substack(subscribed yesterday). They also need teachers and tech workers. And, they welcome creative types.
Thoughts from a primary care MD--Beyond bleak: 1) The former CDC communications director wrote in the WaPo that HHS is now a "superspreader of misinformation"--look to other sources for evidence based information, 2) the mass layoffs at HHS are "shredding HHS"--per STAT news, 3) the clawback of 12 billion dollars to the states for a "non-existent pandemic"--despite a virus that still is killing about 700 people a week are devastating, 4) the anti-vaccine agenda will make vaccines likely not covered by insurance--and states won't have funds to help and vaccines may not even be available,5) NIH research is gutted, 6)I'm sure there's more.
I don't want to come off as "abandon all hope"--but the intentional harm is huge and I'm not seeing how it can be effectively addressed without incalculable damage.
I call my representatives about this, but not sure how it can be effectively remediated.
IMO, in my life, losing vaccines would be incredibly devastating. I don't mind paying for what I need, but will I have the money to do that at the rate the current administration is tanking the economy? The intentional harm they are inflicting on us is beyond understanding.
I just want to say THANK YOU! What you are doing is incredibly exhausting and SO appreciated! You fill us with hope and inspiration, even while watching the boulder fall once again. Please take care of yourself (both Dr. J and team!) because you are too important to us. :)
As someone who suspects the endgame of the sledgehammer approach is (1) power but also (2) the ultimate privatization of public functions from healthcare to education, I would be very interested in an analysis of the potential for private, for-profit industry to assume the primary role in advancing health science. What are the opportunities and what are the risks? Do any specific groups stand to gain or lose more than others? Can something like epidemiology conceivably be run as a for-profit business? (Related: would Tesla and Space-X even exist without the billions in taxpayer money each receives in government contracts or subsidies?)
Also, I want a running tally of dollars spent re-checking for a link between autism and vaccines, compared to dollars cut on advancing cancer treatments.
Thank you not only for what you do in informing us about public health, but especially for adding rays of hope during these dark times. We will survive & we will rebuild our public health programs once again
Dear YLE. This post is hard-hitting, and I felt great devastation. I wish, and hope, that you could find a way to engage RFK in a public debate. I never knew much about the field of public health until Covid — and YLE — came along. What a wake-up call! And now it’s back to sleep. My only hope is that while our “leaders” are snoozing, you and your fellow Public Health professionals are able to keep your jobs and fighting the good fight. It bothers me that you have such a small public forum. I read every day about the stupid decisions and drastic cuts everywhere, but I don’t recall reading about the impact of the cuts that are shoving public health aside and in some cases right out the door! Fox News is the news media most preferred by the current administration. Is there some way you can get BIG on their radar? I know you are “out there” doing your utmost to bring everyone up to speed on important matters, but we need a massive presence on TV and the major news outlets. The so-called mainstream news isn’t so much anymore. How do we get you and your fellow public health professionals out where the public can really see and hear you? Right now, I’d say that calls for persistent and very public dialogue with the government and people like RFK. I read all your posts and have done since Covid arrived and YLE kept me informed and able to know what I needed to do to protect myself. But I fear the greater part of the public is still muddling along with the mis- and dis-information coming out of a government that is supposed to be protecting us. I would like to see everyone reading YLE and seeing you in action nose-to-nose with the likes of RFK. I wish and hope and pray. You are doing us an outstanding service, but the government has built a brick wall between you and the general public. I don’t know where we go from here, but the public needs to learn how to stand up against this wall-building. You are one of the main teachers. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE HAVE THE CONNECTIONS to get our YLE on a platform with people like RFK and Fox News? Or even with Trump? I don’t. I’m old and retired and still hiding from Covid. I write letters to people in government, but they don’t listen. It’s all I can do. But if you have connections and resources, PLEASE use them to help YLE and all of America!
Cynically, YLE should skip Fox and partner with mom influencers. In the middle of all their posts on family, fashion, parenting tips, and brand-promotion, these women could slip the occasional YLE tag.
Yes, but the people who watch PBS probably don’t watch Fox News, and that’s where the current decision-makers are found and watched. We need to get YLE and her colleagues much more visible and influential in those venues. Otherwise, it’s just preaching to the choir.
Not force, but relationship building. So if there are people who know people at Fox, or in the Trump administration, it would be great if they could help create links that might lead to relationships and those might lead to more open minds, exchange of ideas, discussion of real science and facts, . . . Get public health a front row seat, not up in the balcony. And yes, keep preaching to the choir. I’d love to see everybody aware and involved. Professionals like YLE are smart, talented and knowledgeable and they need a much more visible venue. How do they find that?
The Covid pandemic was the societal equivalent of peer-nation warfare, a genuine existential crisis: matters of life and death; great cost; great anxiety; the need to endure and prevail, despite unequally shared sacrifice; the need to act in the face of the unknown and the unknowable because delay entailed loss of life and invited failure.
Our pandemic response was a great victory: when society not only survives such an existential crisis, but is thriving in its wake, victory is the only fitting word.
Why then the nearly universal public condemnation of our performance? The answer is simple: loud voices - for their own gain - are fixing the blame where it does not belong.
The true burden in any existential crisis is a burden that elected leaders must bear. They must be leaders of effective Crisis Communication.
Such moments require our leaders - at all levels - to have their "Winston Churchill Moments" with the communities they are sworn to protect. Something like: "This is a serious situation. I am asking each of you to do everything in your power to resist our common enemy and contribute to victory. If we do this, we will prevail."
Did any of your hear this message from the highest elected offices in the land? I did not.
Many of our leaders - not all - failed miserably in delivering effective Crisis Communication. That failure lead to a vacuum of confidence in our nation's institutions - not just public health - and that lack of confidence resulted in a lack of trust. This is tragic because the public - all of us - are only willing to undertake unfamiliar and unwelcome tasks if we trust the source of that guidance.
Thank goodness, enough people did enough of the right things enough of the time that we squeaked without the widespread collapse of our hospital system. And such a collapse, by the way, was the real risk from the very beginning.
As to the effectiveness of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) - physical distancing, face coverings / mask, personal hygiene and environmental sanitation - which YLE correctly identifies as the only countermeasures available until the end of 2020, the pandemic-related hospitalization data from my state paint an irrefutable picture.
In the latter half of 2020, hospitalizations spiked to the 12,000 per day range, then dropped dramatically over a period of mere weeks and stayed in the manageable ranges for many weeks thereafter.
THE ONLY REASON FOR THAT STEEP DECLINE WAS A CHANGE IN THE PUBLIC'S BEHAVIOR: suddenly everyone know someone who had been hospitalized or died (like my close friend) and people changed their behavior and began practicing the guidance that public health had been recommending all along - those much maligned NPIs.
So, in my humble, yet experienced expert opinion, the war on public health is a transparent exercise in scapegoating. Unless and until this is corrected, Heaven Help Us because our pathogenic enemies never sleep.
Thank you for the helpful information. With respect to the first 16 to 18 months of COVID, as you mentioned, was the serious, uncertainty, and lack of preparedness of the situation. It is a bit like “civil war” revisionist history. When COVID first struck, it was spreading like wildfire, especially in facilities where “older folks” were residents. Second, we didn’t know how to treat those that got the disease. Infectious disease and pulmonologists worked tirelessly to figure out what worked best. Directors of facilities for the elderly worked with continuously to take care of their patients – many were lost. All without strong direction from the President. The primary purpose of the shutdowns and masks were to level off the increase in the rate of infections so it did not exceed hospital capacity – which would have resulted in placing patients in parking lots. The “flattening” spread out the infections to match the capacity of health care. In fact, this was covered in several articles in the INFORMS community. Every state, when it was finally faced with a surge, put in “shutdowns” – even RED states such as Texas and Arizona. When one talks about lives impacted, one needs to create a model to estimate the death and destruction if COVID surged early, before treatments were known and treatment capacity was expanded. This work is best done by modeling teams out of INFORMS – not political scientist or even public health. This group specializes in modeling complex interactions. Even without the model, simply go back to the rate of increase in COVID and how it moved fast. Without shutdowns easily 50% of the population in an area could be infected within a month – which would have surged past capacity and reduced the number of assets to treat patients.
Where mistakes made – yes. For example, in NJ parks were closed and we know covid is unlikely to spread outdoors. In the overall balance, it may well have been better to return to in person school earlier. At the time these were complex questions and models were in limited supply to address these trade-offs. AND structures to collect and organize data were poor – no private firm running a business would survive with this low quality of data and models. Specific to the MRNA based vaccines. These were championed by President Trump who was pushing firms very hard to deliver as fast as possible. No one was asking questions about them back then. Net is to learn from this experience to prepare for the next event. To do anything else is to dishonor those that died.
If pre-vaccine non-pharmaceutical community interventions -- mask-wearing and reductions in face to face contacts throughout the community -- worked to interrupt some (but not all) influenza and RSV transmission -- which I believe they did -- then it seems plausible that the COVID-19 epidemic would have been even worse without them. That should count as a success, not a failure.
I did some analysis a couple of years ago -- that I should revisit and write up more formally -- that suggested that during the first year or so of the pandemic, reported US incidence of a wide variety of communicable diseases that are transmitted person to person (like shigellosis or pertussis) went down much more than reported incidence of reportable communicable diseases that are of environmental origin, like legionellosis. Some reduction of reported incidence was inevitable across all reportable diseases, as public health resources were being cannibalized to support the COVID response; but that effect should have been the same across the whole spectrum of reportable diseases, so a differential between person-to-person and environmental diseases seems noteworthy. If I am correct, this would be attributable to an impact of community closures (restaurants, theaters, many workplaces etc) more than one of mask use.... The one person-to-person infectious disease I looked at that showed almost no effect of the pandemic control measures was gonorrhea.
Richard Hopkins, FL State Epidemiologist 1991-2012, retired.
Yes, Thankyou for this timely summary and letting us know the impacts. Project 2025 and it’s objectives are really coming to fruition. Thankyou public health for making ventilation and filtration a recommendation. I live by them and continue to NEVER be sick. Unfortunately because messaging has been so fractured and I live in a “red” area, we are really seeing the continued effects of this fracture in the health of our children. On the ground, we are seeing anecdotally an unprecedented amount of children not uttering one sound by 14 months. The common thread I have seen is covid infection in utero or in infancy. My area is severely under vaxed and because there was a lack of enforcement regarding air filtration and ventilation, schools used the money for other things. Schools looked at it as a check off list but not with the goal of truly decreasing respiratory infection. Children continue to be sick at high rates- 20% chronically absent. ( I think this is statewide and nationally) Parents continue to complain about their once healthy child that was rarely sick, now being out every month with something. Anecdotally volunteers are noticing more requests for donations for children with lymphoma. ( T cell dysfunction can be associated with Covid infection. The role of T cells is to fight off infection and cancer) Chronic absenteeism is worse in the elementary grades. It was bad 4 years ago and continues to be bad. Our area patted themselves on the back from getting us 40% chronically absent to 20%. Public health in our region was threatened and I felt made to be silent by business interests and county supervisors. Resources were already thin and couldn’t keep up with the data and trends. So yes, it’s disheartening that it’s going to get worse, way worse. Thankyou YLE for all you do. Thankyou everone in the fields of public health, science and medicine. ❤️
You don't want honest conversations or reflection, you want to continue to push your failed narrative on our COVID response.
Our pandemic plans that existed in 2020 (based on decades of research) did not recommend lockdowns, school closures, widespread business closures, etc. There wasn't (and still isn't) any evidence that they reduce the spread of viruses, let alone that they offer a net benefit to society.
Masks have never worked anywhere to reduce the spread of viruses. Every systematic review of RCTs on masking (pre and post-2020) has failed to produce statistically significant evidence of efficacy. Period. They don't work, never have worked, and never will work.
Thankfully, you and your cult are on the losing side of these issues. Unfortunately, you guys did incalculable damage spreading your hysteria and lies.
I'm curious: if none of the mitigation strategies worked, how do you explain flu nearly disappearing?
I understand this question will have no effect on you (because you keep posting the same comments no matter) but I'm genuinely curious how you explain this.
Thank you for all you have done in the past few years. Not sure when I found you but you got me through the COVID pandemic. Please keep writing. Thank you again.
Katelyn your posts have given me hope since the Covid pandemic! Yes, we need to keep our eyes on the long game and not give up. Yes, dark days are ahead, however we cannot underestimate the resilience of the medical/scientific community. It may start with one patient, one county, one community, or one sane voice in government. This destructive force is, in reality, held together by a razor thin margin. Once cracks develop, it will shatter. Sadly, it may take 1-2 years! This means 1-2 years of networking, sharing, and putting out valid information via any channel possible. On a personal note, I spoke with a family in clinic last week who said: "We don't immunize our kids..." Using your data I neutrally spoke of the measles outbreak and the personal risks the kids in the room faced. I finally said: "Think about it, I respect your choices, and know we will always be available. We can keep a set aside just for you." A week later they came back for vaccines. This committed 'refuser' was actually a 'future vaccinator'. The right leaning, science suspicious, fringe community are NOT a uniform block. Perhaps they too are getting a bit skeptical.
Thank you for being civil and most importantly, neutral, with the parents. You left space for them to not feel ✨insert adjective here✨so that the parents COULD come back for vaccine services with no guilt, shame, blame, etc.
Thank you for your tremendous thoughtfulness and service. Every heart and mind changed is to the good and can have a multiplier effect.
Stories like this - and others I’m sure will emerge from this period of thoughtless dismantlement of our Fed public health system - should be nurtured, carefully collected and circulated to serve as examples of effective and sensitive risk communication. They will be needed in the coming time when infectious illness re-emerges and poses a threat to all Americans.
Thanks for this comprehensive and informative update! Of relevance, I think, is the following segment from this evening's PBS News Hour about a newly published analysis of our response to the COVID crisis in 2020. The authors suggest that many measures put into place before the vaccines became available were unduly expensive and ineffective, and that those measures did a lot to polarize and poison the subsequent conversations: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/authors-of-in-covids-wake-on-their-criticism-of-the-governments-pandemic-response
I think you chose to show respect for your patients--their intelligence and love for their children, and because of that they trusted the information you gave them. I think your approach is paramount to succeeding--really that can be said in every area that is being challenged in our political arena. Bottom line people love their children and all their family members and want what is best for them. They are being bombarded by so many conflicting messages, but yours was heard!
Thanks for your insight and explanation of what we are loosing. If anything your analysis is too measured and polite. As a family doc with an MPH I have had the privilege of working with several local DPH over the years, primarily in well funded California counties. I would add a couple of observations:
1. Back before Medicare, clinical medicine had very little knowledge about chronic disease. DHEW (as the federal agency was known then) stepped in and had a whole Division of Chronic Disease. For example it prioritized and funded the many year Framingham Heart Study which provided foundational information about coronary artery disease. Yes RFKjr's priority on chronic disease and nutrition is important, but the public health system has not left these field lie fallow. And the new priority should not subtract basic resources from those PH activities which keep us alive to get old enough to have chronic diseases.
2. In my experience local DPHs run on a such a meager margin of resources, that when a problem or challenge arises, say a case of measles locally, staff have to be pulled from other basic responsibilities (which go undone) to deal with the issue at hand. The cutbacks will hamper full staffing and upgrades, but they will totally eliminate surge capacity and early warning systems.
Sadly the generations that have so successfully avoided challenges from common infectious diseases due to the quiet successes of PH, in their hubris, are putting us all at risk again. Nothing good can come of this.
Just came here to say: KEEP GOING. I know you are tired, angry, hopeless,....but your voice is one that we need. I have followed you since the beginning and you are the one piece of current event information that I can stomach these days. I appreciate you. You are strong. Keep fighting.
Yes, you’ve said what I’m thinking so well. Thank you and thank you YLE.
Being able to access online the scientists around the world active in the research areas surrounding COVID was literally lifesaving for our family. It was just so terrific to watch and benefit from their work - we were awed and so thankful. We learned SO MUCH and had and still have tremendous respect for all they did and still do. It’s devastating to watch their crucial work being dismantled. Dark days indeed.
I noted that Nova Scotia is actively recruiting American doctors and will offer great benefits. Time for the U.S. to wake up and save its workforce.
Canada has a need for 44,000 doctors. I read about this early today in my first Canadian Substack(subscribed yesterday). They also need teachers and tech workers. And, they welcome creative types.
https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/canadas-quiet-coup-u-of-t-snags-yale
Thoughts from a primary care MD--Beyond bleak: 1) The former CDC communications director wrote in the WaPo that HHS is now a "superspreader of misinformation"--look to other sources for evidence based information, 2) the mass layoffs at HHS are "shredding HHS"--per STAT news, 3) the clawback of 12 billion dollars to the states for a "non-existent pandemic"--despite a virus that still is killing about 700 people a week are devastating, 4) the anti-vaccine agenda will make vaccines likely not covered by insurance--and states won't have funds to help and vaccines may not even be available,5) NIH research is gutted, 6)I'm sure there's more.
I don't want to come off as "abandon all hope"--but the intentional harm is huge and I'm not seeing how it can be effectively addressed without incalculable damage.
I call my representatives about this, but not sure how it can be effectively remediated.
IMO, in my life, losing vaccines would be incredibly devastating. I don't mind paying for what I need, but will I have the money to do that at the rate the current administration is tanking the economy? The intentional harm they are inflicting on us is beyond understanding.
I just want to say THANK YOU! What you are doing is incredibly exhausting and SO appreciated! You fill us with hope and inspiration, even while watching the boulder fall once again. Please take care of yourself (both Dr. J and team!) because you are too important to us. :)
As someone who suspects the endgame of the sledgehammer approach is (1) power but also (2) the ultimate privatization of public functions from healthcare to education, I would be very interested in an analysis of the potential for private, for-profit industry to assume the primary role in advancing health science. What are the opportunities and what are the risks? Do any specific groups stand to gain or lose more than others? Can something like epidemiology conceivably be run as a for-profit business? (Related: would Tesla and Space-X even exist without the billions in taxpayer money each receives in government contracts or subsidies?)
Also, I want a running tally of dollars spent re-checking for a link between autism and vaccines, compared to dollars cut on advancing cancer treatments.
Thank you, YLE, for being a trusted source.
Thank you not only for what you do in informing us about public health, but especially for adding rays of hope during these dark times. We will survive & we will rebuild our public health programs once again
Dear YLE. This post is hard-hitting, and I felt great devastation. I wish, and hope, that you could find a way to engage RFK in a public debate. I never knew much about the field of public health until Covid — and YLE — came along. What a wake-up call! And now it’s back to sleep. My only hope is that while our “leaders” are snoozing, you and your fellow Public Health professionals are able to keep your jobs and fighting the good fight. It bothers me that you have such a small public forum. I read every day about the stupid decisions and drastic cuts everywhere, but I don’t recall reading about the impact of the cuts that are shoving public health aside and in some cases right out the door! Fox News is the news media most preferred by the current administration. Is there some way you can get BIG on their radar? I know you are “out there” doing your utmost to bring everyone up to speed on important matters, but we need a massive presence on TV and the major news outlets. The so-called mainstream news isn’t so much anymore. How do we get you and your fellow public health professionals out where the public can really see and hear you? Right now, I’d say that calls for persistent and very public dialogue with the government and people like RFK. I read all your posts and have done since Covid arrived and YLE kept me informed and able to know what I needed to do to protect myself. But I fear the greater part of the public is still muddling along with the mis- and dis-information coming out of a government that is supposed to be protecting us. I would like to see everyone reading YLE and seeing you in action nose-to-nose with the likes of RFK. I wish and hope and pray. You are doing us an outstanding service, but the government has built a brick wall between you and the general public. I don’t know where we go from here, but the public needs to learn how to stand up against this wall-building. You are one of the main teachers. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE HAVE THE CONNECTIONS to get our YLE on a platform with people like RFK and Fox News? Or even with Trump? I don’t. I’m old and retired and still hiding from Covid. I write letters to people in government, but they don’t listen. It’s all I can do. But if you have connections and resources, PLEASE use them to help YLE and all of America!
Cynically, YLE should skip Fox and partner with mom influencers. In the middle of all their posts on family, fashion, parenting tips, and brand-promotion, these women could slip the occasional YLE tag.
What a great idea!!
Miriam,
This is a wonderful thought and likely be very helpful. So many people have not con-fronted the reality that this government is not our friend.
Katelyn has been interviewed at least twice on the PBS News Hour. And another similar.
YLE interviewed at least twice on the pbs news hour and also one of her associates.
Yes, but the people who watch PBS probably don’t watch Fox News, and that’s where the current decision-makers are found and watched. We need to get YLE and her colleagues much more visible and influential in those venues. Otherwise, it’s just preaching to the choir.
Quite correct -- some way?; to force Fox to interview YLE?
bc ... thinks preaching to the choir, important to keep it (them) appraised and active.
Not force, but relationship building. So if there are people who know people at Fox, or in the Trump administration, it would be great if they could help create links that might lead to relationships and those might lead to more open minds, exchange of ideas, discussion of real science and facts, . . . Get public health a front row seat, not up in the balcony. And yes, keep preaching to the choir. I’d love to see everybody aware and involved. Professionals like YLE are smart, talented and knowledgeable and they need a much more visible venue. How do they find that?
Substack includes many not lefty posters. When I attempt to correct gross missinfo. No acknowledgment, so I've given up. At 88 I must ration.
bc .... thinks force required, i.e. using embarassment if don't invite.
Ay, Chihuahuas!
So well said, Dr, Jetelina.
The Covid pandemic was the societal equivalent of peer-nation warfare, a genuine existential crisis: matters of life and death; great cost; great anxiety; the need to endure and prevail, despite unequally shared sacrifice; the need to act in the face of the unknown and the unknowable because delay entailed loss of life and invited failure.
Our pandemic response was a great victory: when society not only survives such an existential crisis, but is thriving in its wake, victory is the only fitting word.
Why then the nearly universal public condemnation of our performance? The answer is simple: loud voices - for their own gain - are fixing the blame where it does not belong.
The true burden in any existential crisis is a burden that elected leaders must bear. They must be leaders of effective Crisis Communication.
Such moments require our leaders - at all levels - to have their "Winston Churchill Moments" with the communities they are sworn to protect. Something like: "This is a serious situation. I am asking each of you to do everything in your power to resist our common enemy and contribute to victory. If we do this, we will prevail."
Did any of your hear this message from the highest elected offices in the land? I did not.
Many of our leaders - not all - failed miserably in delivering effective Crisis Communication. That failure lead to a vacuum of confidence in our nation's institutions - not just public health - and that lack of confidence resulted in a lack of trust. This is tragic because the public - all of us - are only willing to undertake unfamiliar and unwelcome tasks if we trust the source of that guidance.
Thank goodness, enough people did enough of the right things enough of the time that we squeaked without the widespread collapse of our hospital system. And such a collapse, by the way, was the real risk from the very beginning.
As to the effectiveness of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) - physical distancing, face coverings / mask, personal hygiene and environmental sanitation - which YLE correctly identifies as the only countermeasures available until the end of 2020, the pandemic-related hospitalization data from my state paint an irrefutable picture.
In the latter half of 2020, hospitalizations spiked to the 12,000 per day range, then dropped dramatically over a period of mere weeks and stayed in the manageable ranges for many weeks thereafter.
THE ONLY REASON FOR THAT STEEP DECLINE WAS A CHANGE IN THE PUBLIC'S BEHAVIOR: suddenly everyone know someone who had been hospitalized or died (like my close friend) and people changed their behavior and began practicing the guidance that public health had been recommending all along - those much maligned NPIs.
So, in my humble, yet experienced expert opinion, the war on public health is a transparent exercise in scapegoating. Unless and until this is corrected, Heaven Help Us because our pathogenic enemies never sleep.
Thank you for the helpful information. With respect to the first 16 to 18 months of COVID, as you mentioned, was the serious, uncertainty, and lack of preparedness of the situation. It is a bit like “civil war” revisionist history. When COVID first struck, it was spreading like wildfire, especially in facilities where “older folks” were residents. Second, we didn’t know how to treat those that got the disease. Infectious disease and pulmonologists worked tirelessly to figure out what worked best. Directors of facilities for the elderly worked with continuously to take care of their patients – many were lost. All without strong direction from the President. The primary purpose of the shutdowns and masks were to level off the increase in the rate of infections so it did not exceed hospital capacity – which would have resulted in placing patients in parking lots. The “flattening” spread out the infections to match the capacity of health care. In fact, this was covered in several articles in the INFORMS community. Every state, when it was finally faced with a surge, put in “shutdowns” – even RED states such as Texas and Arizona. When one talks about lives impacted, one needs to create a model to estimate the death and destruction if COVID surged early, before treatments were known and treatment capacity was expanded. This work is best done by modeling teams out of INFORMS – not political scientist or even public health. This group specializes in modeling complex interactions. Even without the model, simply go back to the rate of increase in COVID and how it moved fast. Without shutdowns easily 50% of the population in an area could be infected within a month – which would have surged past capacity and reduced the number of assets to treat patients.
Where mistakes made – yes. For example, in NJ parks were closed and we know covid is unlikely to spread outdoors. In the overall balance, it may well have been better to return to in person school earlier. At the time these were complex questions and models were in limited supply to address these trade-offs. AND structures to collect and organize data were poor – no private firm running a business would survive with this low quality of data and models. Specific to the MRNA based vaccines. These were championed by President Trump who was pushing firms very hard to deliver as fast as possible. No one was asking questions about them back then. Net is to learn from this experience to prepare for the next event. To do anything else is to dishonor those that died.
If pre-vaccine non-pharmaceutical community interventions -- mask-wearing and reductions in face to face contacts throughout the community -- worked to interrupt some (but not all) influenza and RSV transmission -- which I believe they did -- then it seems plausible that the COVID-19 epidemic would have been even worse without them. That should count as a success, not a failure.
I did some analysis a couple of years ago -- that I should revisit and write up more formally -- that suggested that during the first year or so of the pandemic, reported US incidence of a wide variety of communicable diseases that are transmitted person to person (like shigellosis or pertussis) went down much more than reported incidence of reportable communicable diseases that are of environmental origin, like legionellosis. Some reduction of reported incidence was inevitable across all reportable diseases, as public health resources were being cannibalized to support the COVID response; but that effect should have been the same across the whole spectrum of reportable diseases, so a differential between person-to-person and environmental diseases seems noteworthy. If I am correct, this would be attributable to an impact of community closures (restaurants, theaters, many workplaces etc) more than one of mask use.... The one person-to-person infectious disease I looked at that showed almost no effect of the pandemic control measures was gonorrhea.
Richard Hopkins, FL State Epidemiologist 1991-2012, retired.
Yes, Thankyou for this timely summary and letting us know the impacts. Project 2025 and it’s objectives are really coming to fruition. Thankyou public health for making ventilation and filtration a recommendation. I live by them and continue to NEVER be sick. Unfortunately because messaging has been so fractured and I live in a “red” area, we are really seeing the continued effects of this fracture in the health of our children. On the ground, we are seeing anecdotally an unprecedented amount of children not uttering one sound by 14 months. The common thread I have seen is covid infection in utero or in infancy. My area is severely under vaxed and because there was a lack of enforcement regarding air filtration and ventilation, schools used the money for other things. Schools looked at it as a check off list but not with the goal of truly decreasing respiratory infection. Children continue to be sick at high rates- 20% chronically absent. ( I think this is statewide and nationally) Parents continue to complain about their once healthy child that was rarely sick, now being out every month with something. Anecdotally volunteers are noticing more requests for donations for children with lymphoma. ( T cell dysfunction can be associated with Covid infection. The role of T cells is to fight off infection and cancer) Chronic absenteeism is worse in the elementary grades. It was bad 4 years ago and continues to be bad. Our area patted themselves on the back from getting us 40% chronically absent to 20%. Public health in our region was threatened and I felt made to be silent by business interests and county supervisors. Resources were already thin and couldn’t keep up with the data and trends. So yes, it’s disheartening that it’s going to get worse, way worse. Thankyou YLE for all you do. Thankyou everone in the fields of public health, science and medicine. ❤️
You don't want honest conversations or reflection, you want to continue to push your failed narrative on our COVID response.
Our pandemic plans that existed in 2020 (based on decades of research) did not recommend lockdowns, school closures, widespread business closures, etc. There wasn't (and still isn't) any evidence that they reduce the spread of viruses, let alone that they offer a net benefit to society.
Masks have never worked anywhere to reduce the spread of viruses. Every systematic review of RCTs on masking (pre and post-2020) has failed to produce statistically significant evidence of efficacy. Period. They don't work, never have worked, and never will work.
Thankfully, you and your cult are on the losing side of these issues. Unfortunately, you guys did incalculable damage spreading your hysteria and lies.
I'm curious: if none of the mitigation strategies worked, how do you explain flu nearly disappearing?
I understand this question will have no effect on you (because you keep posting the same comments no matter) but I'm genuinely curious how you explain this.
viral interference. It's been seen many times throughout history