Many Americans seem to think that total knowledge of COVID-19 arrived on Day One, and thus all advice should have been perfect from then on. That's not how life works.
I'm in awe of the CDC and scientists in general and tend to attribute their factual errors to the fact (obvious only to me??) that they began, as we did, with no solid knowledge about how COVID spreads, or precisely how masks, social distancing, and vaccines protect us.
Though all info was imperfect, strong messages were immediately (and perpetually) needed to counteract anti-vaxxer lies that were being promoted by the then-President, of all people. Those lies were killing thousands of Americans day after day from Day One and continue to do so.
My own inclination has been to stay alive, not to argue. When advice changed, I adjusted my safety procedures. One day, I stopped washing groceries and patting the mail with disinfectant wipes. I first bought surgical masks then set them aside and bought the more protective kind. When advice in the media was puzzling or self-contradictory, I studied YLE and Johns Hopkins emails.
This old lady just got vaccinated for the #?th time and will keep getting boosted as often as possible. I suspect that some people are just querulous by nature, and never glimpse the big picture.
It seems the big ELEPHANT in the room is being ignored. When leaders, as in the president of the USA and Governors like mine in Florida, tell people during an active pandemic, "just ignore it, it will go away", and then State Surgeon Generals like mine in FLA tell people vaccinations are dangerous and could harm you, that creates serious disbelief in science. People seek direction from leaders. It is very hard for those that are part of the current cult that follow a flawed narcissistic leader to overcome their emotional brain and think with their executive functioning side of their brain. I know many people at the doctorate level that have suddenly become anti vaccine because of political pressure. It is so hard to comprehend that change in the face of data, yet your statistics bear that out.
I am a community based RN and I was so angry at the CDC regarding the initial mask guidance. At first we were told that masks did not help and that was the guidance that I shared in my practice. Then we had mask mandates and it was hard to explain to people the flip flop. Then we find out that the initial guidance was because of the concern over PPE shortages. I have to admit, that was an integrity hit that was hard to over come for me personally.
Just want to express my support for having these conversations in as constructive a way as possible. This seems to be a good model of how to do that. Thanks to Kelley Krohnert for reaching out and to YLE for being receptive and respectful.
A lot of good information came out during the pandemic. I feel that the most important information has been loudly ignored - the need to have clean indoor air. Modern commercial and residential buildings are built to be energy efficient at the expense of environmental health. To compound this the WHO in the early phase of the pandemic categorically denied airborne transmission in April 2020 despite information presented by particle physicists. The WHO finally admitted that airborne transmission might be a form of transmission later in July
We now know that virus particles (COVID, Measles and more!) and bacteria (Tuberculosis) can remain suspended in the air for long periods, somewhat like tobacco smoke. The easiest way to crudely check room air quality is to measure room air CO2. I was shocked when I first did it in my study when I raised room air CO2 levels from 600 to 1000 ppm. Even more so in my busy veterinary practice when I saw levels go the 1300 ppm within an hour!
The real key to control and prevent respiratory virus/bacterial infections is to change or filter the air in all buildings. Don't ignore the benefits of vaccination, but if you want true overall "herd health", the goal of Epidemiologists, then we must work to improve the quality of indoor air to control many diseases.
I recommend the book: Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity, Allen & Macomber
As someone working in public health, I expected to disagree with way more than I did. But honestly, I had some of the same concerns as was mentioned, particularly about the lack of helpful advice beyond “get vaccinated”. I once got so upset at a CDC page where I was looking for guidance, and it said “talk to your doctor”. First off, if the CDC doesn’t know what to do, how do they expect doctors to? And secondly, why is the largest public health organization in the country passing the burden to the individual??
Thank you for having this conversation. I believe that - as with many public policy issues - we all exercise confirmation bias: we heed information that bolsters our existing opinions and beliefs. For instance, I know two people who died of Covid before the vaccines were available, and a family member with underlying health conditions never fully recovered after a case of it; he died two years ago yesterday. Only a handful of people I know have *not* contracted the virus; some became very ill and clearly have long Covid - so I find the statement that “many people knew few, if any, people who were hospitalized or died from Covid” baffling, and, as someone in her 70s, I find the CDC’s messaging credible and entirely appropriate.
Maybe I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole, but I personally still mask and am concerned about long term effects of Covid. I think the new go back to work once your fever is gone is ridiculous. Many never have a fever, and we are contagious much longer than a day or two: why we think it’s okay to continue spreading this disease that thousands are still dying from each month is just crazy. Our world has lost its collective mind.
I’d like to hear what Kelley learned from you- you shared what you learned from her and how some of your perceptions changed after speaking with her but I am curious what she learned from speaking with you.
This is a really good instance of constructive engagement. I salute Kelley for being willing to reach out, and for being blunt but not offensive. I salute Katelyn for her restraint in sharing Kelley's views without a point-by-point rebuttal.
For me, the most telling comment is the last, about the disconnect between citizen experience and health-provider reality. Statistical thinking is not how we humans naturally assess risk. This comes up in many contexts, including seatbelt wearing. (Hardly any of us knows someone who died when hurled through their windshield in a crash, and no one who drives without a seatbelt ever experiences that ... until they do.) One of the coronavirus's adaptive advantages was that its fatality rate was high enough to overburden hospitals to the breaking point but low enough that more than 99% of people survived more-or-less unscathed. That's practically an invisible crisis. And yet, I *know* hospital workers who worked close to double-time through the pandemic and lost patient after patient -- nearly all of them unvaccinated.
I am amazed that CDC and other leaders did not emphasize that they were feeling their way with a novel virus. "This is the best we can recommend today. As more information is available, we will change our guidance."
I was locked down outside the US. They followed the pandemic response playbook by the letter. Political leaders deferred all comment to the Pandemic Response Team. That team was strict, much more repressive than in the US. But they were given the authority to act in the name of public health, and stepped up to take charge.
When the public became weary, watching the US refuse to shut down, there was some push-back. That is, until the politicians in the US started taking charge and spouting nonsense. When a US governor explained that we were just going to have to accept that the old people would die, the population in Latin America settled down immediately. No one wanted to risk their parents or grandparents by an accidental infection.
Sometimes, if you can't be a good example, you can lead by being a rotten example and a warning of the worst that can happen. At least in this, the US served the purpose of scaring the rest of the world into careful deliberation and listening to the folks better prepared to offer recommendations than we.
I applaud the courage of both women and echo comments already made. And I appreciate Katelyn's restraint and not inserting rebuttals in Kelley's summary. There are times when those of us in Public Health just need to listen. I think the expression is that "no one is going to change their minds unless they feel they have been heard."
“ While some people did get very sick from Covid, and many doctors were indeed traumatized by this, many people knew few, if any, people who were hospitalized or died from Covid.”
Over 1.1 million Americans died from Covid-19. I do believe the majority of Americans knew someone who was hospitalized or died from Covid.
The share of Americans who were killed by the coronavirus was at least 63 percent higher than in any other large, wealthy nation, according to a New York Times analysis of mortality figures. This is because our nation was at the bottom of the list regarding vaccination rates.
It is sad and unacceptable that so many of my fellow Americans died needlessly because of the fear of getting vaccinated. What a catastrophic failure of healthcare messaging—with blame to go around everywhere.
Covid vaccines are incredibly safe and effective in preventing death from this disease. Instead of rejoicing, like when we developed the polio vaccine, it is beyond comprehension that so many refused this lifesaving inoculation.
Just a plain old scientist/mom here who took it for granted that COVID (in the height of the emergency) was relatively easy for me to navigate without relying on media/government noise. And I still believe one the greatest barriers to trust in scientists is people accepting that we don't have all the answers immediately and that as our understanding grows, recommendations can change. I also think public health messaging over-corrected out of desperation, because people were shutting down and the emergency was real. Then it was just a vicious cycle where the fear contributed to even less cooperation. People could not fathom a world where this kind of pandemic was truly possible and in a country that is so individualistic, there appeared to be little incentive to simply look out for each other (ie, the most vulnerable). Beyond the poor communication and potentially exaggerated claims, we have cultural, educational, and socioeconomic crises in the US and other countries that made collective action virtually impossible.
Many Americans seem to think that total knowledge of COVID-19 arrived on Day One, and thus all advice should have been perfect from then on. That's not how life works.
I'm in awe of the CDC and scientists in general and tend to attribute their factual errors to the fact (obvious only to me??) that they began, as we did, with no solid knowledge about how COVID spreads, or precisely how masks, social distancing, and vaccines protect us.
Though all info was imperfect, strong messages were immediately (and perpetually) needed to counteract anti-vaxxer lies that were being promoted by the then-President, of all people. Those lies were killing thousands of Americans day after day from Day One and continue to do so.
My own inclination has been to stay alive, not to argue. When advice changed, I adjusted my safety procedures. One day, I stopped washing groceries and patting the mail with disinfectant wipes. I first bought surgical masks then set them aside and bought the more protective kind. When advice in the media was puzzling or self-contradictory, I studied YLE and Johns Hopkins emails.
This old lady just got vaccinated for the #?th time and will keep getting boosted as often as possible. I suspect that some people are just querulous by nature, and never glimpse the big picture.
It seems the big ELEPHANT in the room is being ignored. When leaders, as in the president of the USA and Governors like mine in Florida, tell people during an active pandemic, "just ignore it, it will go away", and then State Surgeon Generals like mine in FLA tell people vaccinations are dangerous and could harm you, that creates serious disbelief in science. People seek direction from leaders. It is very hard for those that are part of the current cult that follow a flawed narcissistic leader to overcome their emotional brain and think with their executive functioning side of their brain. I know many people at the doctorate level that have suddenly become anti vaccine because of political pressure. It is so hard to comprehend that change in the face of data, yet your statistics bear that out.
I am a community based RN and I was so angry at the CDC regarding the initial mask guidance. At first we were told that masks did not help and that was the guidance that I shared in my practice. Then we had mask mandates and it was hard to explain to people the flip flop. Then we find out that the initial guidance was because of the concern over PPE shortages. I have to admit, that was an integrity hit that was hard to over come for me personally.
Just want to express my support for having these conversations in as constructive a way as possible. This seems to be a good model of how to do that. Thanks to Kelley Krohnert for reaching out and to YLE for being receptive and respectful.
A lot of good information came out during the pandemic. I feel that the most important information has been loudly ignored - the need to have clean indoor air. Modern commercial and residential buildings are built to be energy efficient at the expense of environmental health. To compound this the WHO in the early phase of the pandemic categorically denied airborne transmission in April 2020 despite information presented by particle physicists. The WHO finally admitted that airborne transmission might be a form of transmission later in July
We now know that virus particles (COVID, Measles and more!) and bacteria (Tuberculosis) can remain suspended in the air for long periods, somewhat like tobacco smoke. The easiest way to crudely check room air quality is to measure room air CO2. I was shocked when I first did it in my study when I raised room air CO2 levels from 600 to 1000 ppm. Even more so in my busy veterinary practice when I saw levels go the 1300 ppm within an hour!
The real key to control and prevent respiratory virus/bacterial infections is to change or filter the air in all buildings. Don't ignore the benefits of vaccination, but if you want true overall "herd health", the goal of Epidemiologists, then we must work to improve the quality of indoor air to control many diseases.
I recommend the book: Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity, Allen & Macomber
As someone working in public health, I expected to disagree with way more than I did. But honestly, I had some of the same concerns as was mentioned, particularly about the lack of helpful advice beyond “get vaccinated”. I once got so upset at a CDC page where I was looking for guidance, and it said “talk to your doctor”. First off, if the CDC doesn’t know what to do, how do they expect doctors to? And secondly, why is the largest public health organization in the country passing the burden to the individual??
Thank you for having this conversation. I believe that - as with many public policy issues - we all exercise confirmation bias: we heed information that bolsters our existing opinions and beliefs. For instance, I know two people who died of Covid before the vaccines were available, and a family member with underlying health conditions never fully recovered after a case of it; he died two years ago yesterday. Only a handful of people I know have *not* contracted the virus; some became very ill and clearly have long Covid - so I find the statement that “many people knew few, if any, people who were hospitalized or died from Covid” baffling, and, as someone in her 70s, I find the CDC’s messaging credible and entirely appropriate.
Maybe I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole, but I personally still mask and am concerned about long term effects of Covid. I think the new go back to work once your fever is gone is ridiculous. Many never have a fever, and we are contagious much longer than a day or two: why we think it’s okay to continue spreading this disease that thousands are still dying from each month is just crazy. Our world has lost its collective mind.
I’d like to hear what Kelley learned from you- you shared what you learned from her and how some of your perceptions changed after speaking with her but I am curious what she learned from speaking with you.
This is a really good instance of constructive engagement. I salute Kelley for being willing to reach out, and for being blunt but not offensive. I salute Katelyn for her restraint in sharing Kelley's views without a point-by-point rebuttal.
For me, the most telling comment is the last, about the disconnect between citizen experience and health-provider reality. Statistical thinking is not how we humans naturally assess risk. This comes up in many contexts, including seatbelt wearing. (Hardly any of us knows someone who died when hurled through their windshield in a crash, and no one who drives without a seatbelt ever experiences that ... until they do.) One of the coronavirus's adaptive advantages was that its fatality rate was high enough to overburden hospitals to the breaking point but low enough that more than 99% of people survived more-or-less unscathed. That's practically an invisible crisis. And yet, I *know* hospital workers who worked close to double-time through the pandemic and lost patient after patient -- nearly all of them unvaccinated.
I am amazed that CDC and other leaders did not emphasize that they were feeling their way with a novel virus. "This is the best we can recommend today. As more information is available, we will change our guidance."
I was locked down outside the US. They followed the pandemic response playbook by the letter. Political leaders deferred all comment to the Pandemic Response Team. That team was strict, much more repressive than in the US. But they were given the authority to act in the name of public health, and stepped up to take charge.
When the public became weary, watching the US refuse to shut down, there was some push-back. That is, until the politicians in the US started taking charge and spouting nonsense. When a US governor explained that we were just going to have to accept that the old people would die, the population in Latin America settled down immediately. No one wanted to risk their parents or grandparents by an accidental infection.
Sometimes, if you can't be a good example, you can lead by being a rotten example and a warning of the worst that can happen. At least in this, the US served the purpose of scaring the rest of the world into careful deliberation and listening to the folks better prepared to offer recommendations than we.
I applaud the courage of both women and echo comments already made. And I appreciate Katelyn's restraint and not inserting rebuttals in Kelley's summary. There are times when those of us in Public Health just need to listen. I think the expression is that "no one is going to change their minds unless they feel they have been heard."
“ While some people did get very sick from Covid, and many doctors were indeed traumatized by this, many people knew few, if any, people who were hospitalized or died from Covid.”
Over 1.1 million Americans died from Covid-19. I do believe the majority of Americans knew someone who was hospitalized or died from Covid.
The share of Americans who were killed by the coronavirus was at least 63 percent higher than in any other large, wealthy nation, according to a New York Times analysis of mortality figures. This is because our nation was at the bottom of the list regarding vaccination rates.
It is sad and unacceptable that so many of my fellow Americans died needlessly because of the fear of getting vaccinated. What a catastrophic failure of healthcare messaging—with blame to go around everywhere.
Covid vaccines are incredibly safe and effective in preventing death from this disease. Instead of rejoicing, like when we developed the polio vaccine, it is beyond comprehension that so many refused this lifesaving inoculation.
Well, considering that we are still in the pandemic… your verb tense is wrong (among other things).
Very, very classy to publish her comments. Good for you! YLE is the best!
Just a plain old scientist/mom here who took it for granted that COVID (in the height of the emergency) was relatively easy for me to navigate without relying on media/government noise. And I still believe one the greatest barriers to trust in scientists is people accepting that we don't have all the answers immediately and that as our understanding grows, recommendations can change. I also think public health messaging over-corrected out of desperation, because people were shutting down and the emergency was real. Then it was just a vicious cycle where the fear contributed to even less cooperation. People could not fathom a world where this kind of pandemic was truly possible and in a country that is so individualistic, there appeared to be little incentive to simply look out for each other (ie, the most vulnerable). Beyond the poor communication and potentially exaggerated claims, we have cultural, educational, and socioeconomic crises in the US and other countries that made collective action virtually impossible.