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The World Health Organization said five years ago declared the cause of the COVVI-19 pandemic. This has introduced generalized closures, mask mandates and vaccines and huge social and economic damage. William Brangham spoke with the authors of “In Covid’s Wake: how ours for us has failed us”, a new electronic book that is very critical in the way the United States reacted to this crisis.
Notice: Transcripts are from devices and humans generated and altered for accuracy. They would possibly involve mistakes.
Geoff Bennett:
Five years ago, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which introduced the blockages, mask mandates and vaccines, and had a massive social and economic impact.
William Brangham talks to the authors of a new electronic book that strongly criticizes the United States has responded to the crisis.
William Brangham:
This new eBook is “in Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us. “
And it looks back at how critical U. S. institutions, government, academia, and the press among them have carried out the pandemic and how their reaction has ignited distrust, suppressed dissent, and taken a huge toll on the country.
Its authors are two political scientists from Princeton University, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. And now it’s us.
Welcome from you.
One of the main themes of this book, as it turns out to me, is that, in the early days of this pandemic, as our leaders debated the locks, how to react, that any dissent or a genuine debate about the prices and benefits of those moves was subjected to.
Stephen Macedo, co -author, “In Covid’s Wake: how our policy failed us”: Well, that’s interesting.
In March 2020, when locks were promulgated in the United States and in many Western countries, dissidents spoke in March. Some known people have warned that these measures were not successful and would be very expensive.
And then the consensus seemed to expand in April and May that those kinds of methods enacted through the Chinese and that had been implemented in Italy, the national blockade and through a giant component of the United States, which is the right strategy, that everyone had to be on board for this, that it is an important feeling of unity, that the government, academia, science, journalism that is united to be united, and that is what is forcing the obligatory.
And, in fact, at that time, the voices of dissent have become rare. Social media corporations began to eliminate some publications that did not agree with government messages, and dissent decreased during summer and autumn.
William Brangham:
Frances, one of the things in which a genuine revelation for me is the way he documes in the electronic book that, before Covid, that many analysis of what is happening were carried out if a respiratory virus arises.
And consensus or an edit of a consensus that the blocks are not that effective and that it would charge the company a lot.
Frances Lee, co -author, “in Covid’s Wake: how our policy failed us”: yes, there was a huge painting that made plans for what to do when the next pandemic arrived.
And we took measures at the beginning of the pandemic that were in contradiction with the recommendations. They had been in some cases. There was a report through the World Health Organization from November 2019 that proved what was known for all the proposed non-pharmaceutical interventions.
William Brangham:
These are masks, closures, isolation, tests, tracking, etc.
Frances Lee:
The business closures, the school closures, tested what is known about the effectiveness of each of those measures. And in all areas, the report indicates that the evidence base for the effectiveness of each of them is poor.
Therefore, it is so surprising that you get six months later and those measures are used worldwide, political resolution, manufacturers that say they adhere to science. And, of course, it is evident that all these measures have great costs.
So as policymakers weigh their alternatives, there are benefits, but some costs.
Stephen Macedo:
I mean, there is one thing, in those early pandemic plans that are applicable to this question, namely, those plans warn that science, that government officials, civil officials feel tempted to adopt these measures, those strict blocking measures, to show that they are in charge, Forarray.
William Brangham:
To say, hey, they gave us this.
Stephen Macedo:
Yes, exactly, to take control.
And those first plans remain firm in the advice of Mavens and public officials of physical conditioning so that they are in advance with the public on the thin foundation of evidence for them and the certainty of costs. So he ignored.
Then, of course, there was the World Health Organization, a project that went to China, returned after spending a week there and approved the Chinese blocking strategy without qualification, and said that the global total attached to this strict blocking direction to eliminate the virus.
There was a prediction that came out here, founded on mathematical models of Imperial College London, which predicted 2. 2 million deaths in the United States until August 2020 if we have not implemented those measures that led to a kind of panic, I believe, and the lack of rationally the prices of those measures and the probability of their success.
William Brangham:
There are many public fitness experts who look at our delight and say, either in the warmth of the moment and in what we learned later, that keeping other people away, that social distancing was first an essential detail of the protection of other people.
And what about me, what’s your opinion on this?
Frances Lee:
Well, it is a theory that if we can separate people, that we can buy the time before vaccines have been available. But it had only been tried at the giant scale.
And I think that what was overlooked this plan to make plans was the vital component of the force of paintings that deserves the paintings, either Isarray.
William Brangham:
The so -called workers.
Frances Lee:
Essential personnel make up about a third of the workforce that has had to continue to do their job in the user of the blocks.
And so, the virus will have to continue spreading under those conditions.
William Brangham:
When you look at how other states have reacted here in the United States, we have noticed other incredible responses, some use very strict policies, others are a bit more loose.
What does it show how these states have performed?
Frances Lee:
There were locks in the United States; 43 governors have issued orders from the House of Representatives. Where to see divergence in politics in the United States is in the reopening process.
Democratic states have remained blocked 2. 5 times more than Republican states. Even if democratic states have begun to reopen, they have maintained more restrictions than Republican states. But when he looks at the accumulated accumulated mortality at a time when the vaccine deployment has begun, there is no difference between states that have followed cocovid policies and states that were more lax.
We cannot conclude, which means that these measures do not work, but that means that there is a lack of evidence that they work.
William Brangham:
Especially in the soft of what we now know as the psychological, economic and educational position for children, for people, for companies throughout this country.
Frances Lee:
And also the budget costs, the amount of loans that force to finance the closures. It is more or less equivalent as a percentage of GDP of what we spend on the New Deal and the financial rescue of 2009 combined.
William Brangham:
Does your fatherhood of this electronic book give us a concept of how we have to do things if it is maximum, probably when the next pandemic comes?
Stephen Macedo:
Yes, I would say so.
I think we have to make sure that we are open to dissent and that we are open to dissent when it comes from the other side. One of the things we discovered is that the pandemic has become very polarized. Democratic states were on one side. The Republican states were on the other side.
We deserve to have been more open than the complaint related to the other side. I think that applies to science. Science has politicized, journalism, unfortunately. And I think that even universities, to some extent, doubted to ask difficult questions about our delight on the covers due to the partisan inflection of some of those problems.
William Brangham:
There are many other elements in this book, social media, freedom of expression, as you say, the debate about masks. I can’t get here.
I thank both of them. The e-book is called “On Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Have Failed Us. “
Frances Lee, Stephen Macedo, thank you very much.
Stephen Macedo:
Thank you William.
Frances Lee:
Thank you.
William Brangham is an award-winning correspondent, manufacturer and replacement at PBS News Time.
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