The Blindfold and CYA

From the Wall Street Journal:

“‘Follow the science’ has been the battle cry of lockdown supporters since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Yet before March 2020, the mainstream scientific community, including the World Health Organization, strongly opposed lockdowns and similar measures against infectious disease.

That judgment came from historical analysis of pandemics and an awareness that societywide restrictions have severe socioeconomic costs and almost entirely speculative benefits. Our pandemic response, premised on lockdowns and closely related “non-pharmaceutical interventions,” or NPIs, represented an unprecedented and unjustified shift in scientific opinion from where it stood a few months before the discovery of Covid-19.

In March 2019, the WHO team declared that large-scale home quarantine was ‘not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure.’

A September 2019 report from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security reached a similar conclusion: “In the context of a high-impact respiratory pathogen, quarantine may be the least likely NPI to be effective in controlling the spread due to high transmissibility.” This was especially true of a fast-spreading airborne virus, such as the then-undiscovered SARS-CoV-2.

Even at the outset of Covid-19, the unwisdom of lockdowns guided mainstream epidemiology. When the Wuhan region of China imposed harsh restrictions on Jan. 23, 2020, Anthony Fauci questioned the move. ‘That’s something that I don’t think we could possibly do in the United States, I can’t imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles,’ Dr. Fauci told CNN. He likely had the scientific literature in mind when he advised that ‘historically, when you shut things down, it doesn’t have a major effect.’”

As we all are aware, lockdowns were mandated, and as with most mandates, lockdowns have not worked. Why now after almost two years of Covid-hysteria are we still flirting with and threatening a further “lockdown strategy?” Is it possible that a CYA strategy is in play? Can anyone imagine Public Health officials coming out and now saying … “Oops, sorry. I guess we made a minor mistake with our lockdown advice. Although this strategy ended up ruining the lives of millions, theoretically it probably saved the lives of many. Actually way back, we recommended lockdowns because … because we didn’t know what else to do, and certainly we just had to do something!”

‘Having to do something without knowing the efficacy of that something,’ naturally leads me to the masking of school children. OMG! To me this seems like a blindfolded man playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey … total arbitrary randomness. Evidence? Science?  … or perhaps the ultimate CYA!

For instance:

The state of Michigan released data last week that show schools with mask mandates have “similar” COVID-19 case rates to those not requiring face coverings.

The state published the “Michigan COVID Response Data and Modeling Update” on Dec. 14. The analysis examined COVID-19 data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the Michigan Disease Surveillance System as recently as Dec. 3, of school students ages 5-18.

The report stated, “Case rates in 5–18-year-olds have become more similar across mask rule types.”

The latest reporting actually shows that schools with “few/no mask rules” had fewer 7-day average cases per 100,000 than schools where masks are required or schools with “partial mask rules.”

Despite the transmission results, health officials noted, “It remains important to mask up in indoor settings (schools and otherwise) to prevent transmission.” … This appears to be another example of CYA!  Or perhaps it is that same blind folded man and the same donkey!

What about mask mandates in general? From different researchers:

Researchers from the University of Louisville examined COVID-19 case growth and mask use in the United States, comparing states with mask mandates to states without, and found that “mask mandates and use likely did not affect COVID-19 case growth.”

“For our study, we wanted to determine if effects of mask mandates and use were observable in the general population,” Dr. Damian Guerra, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Louisville, said. “Essentially, did the theory of mask effectiveness hold up on a population-wide level?”

The results contradict the popular belief that mask mandates effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19.

“It appears that mandates and typical mask use among the public have no substantial impact on COVID-19 growth,” Guerra said. “Early in the pandemic (Summer 2020), there was an association between lower infection rates and mask mandates and use. However, this association disappeared when transmission levels rose despite increased mask use in the Fall and Winter.”

When are we going to stop this CYA nonsense and actually take the blindfold off?

12/23/21

californiacontrarian