THANK YOU. Please check your reception box to confirm.
Leave your comments
The World Health Organization said five years ago it declared the cause of the pandemic CovVI-19. This has introduced widespread lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and enormous social and economic damage. William Brangham spoke with the authors of “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Our for Us Has Failed Us,” a new e-book that is highly critical of 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 Covvi-19 Pandemic, which introduced generalized closures, masks and vaccines mandates, and had a massive social and economic impact.
William Brangham speaks with the authors of a new e-book that sharply criticizes the United States for responding to the crisis.
William Brangham:
This new electronic book is “in Covid’s Wake: how our policy failed us. “
And look back in the way in which the American institutions, the Government, the Global Educational and the press between them, the pandemic occurred, and how their reaction ignited distrust, repressed dissent and gain the country greatly.
Its authors are two political scientists from Princeton University, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. And now they sign up for us.
Welcome from you.
One of the main themes of this book, as is for me, is that, in the first days of this pandemic, while our leaders discussed the locks, how to react, that any dissent or a genuine debate about the prices and benefits of those movements were submitted to.
Stephen Macedo, co -author, “In Covid’s Wake: how our policy failed us”: Well, that’s interesting.
In March 2020, as locks were promulgated in the United States and in many Western countries, dissidents spoke in March. Some high profile other people have warned that these measures are unlikely to be successful and will be very expensive.
And then, the consensus seemed to expand in April and May that these types of methods promulgated 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, which is an important feeling of unity, that the government, the academy, the sciences, the journalism that is united to be united, that is united to be united. forcing the mandatory.
And, in fact, at that time, dissenting voices have rare. Social Network Corporations have begun to eliminate safe publications in the War of Words with government messages, and dissent has decreased in 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 the consensus or some edition of a consensus was that the blockages so effective and that they would greatly charge society.
Frances Lee, co -author, “in Covid’s Wake: how our policy failed us”: yes, there had been a lot of paintings making 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, lockdowns, isolation, testing, tracing, etc.
Frances Lee:
Business closures, school closures, proved what is known about the effectiveness of each of those measures. And in all areas, the report indicates that the basis of the evidence of the effectiveness of each of them poor.
Therefore, it is so surprising that you get six months later and those measures are used throughout the world, political resolution, manufacturers that say they adhere to science. And, of course, it is evident that all these measures have great costs.
So, as policy formulators weigh their alternatives, there are benefits, but some costs.
Stephen Macedo:
I mean, there is one thing: something else in those first pandemic plans that are applicable to this issue, which are those plans warn that science, that government officials, public servants will be tempted to adopt these measures, those strict blocking measures, to show that they are in charge, to . . .
William Brangham:
To say, hey, we had that.
Stephen Macedo:
Yes, exactly, to take control.
And those first plans are categorical to advise the mavens and public physical conditioning officials who are sincere with the public based on thin evidence for them and the certainty of costs. He was 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 this series of measures that led to a kind of panic, I believe, and a 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 that, either in the warmth of the moment and in what we learned later, that keeping other people far away, that social distancing was first a critical component of other protective people.
And what about me, what’s your opinion on this?
Frances Lee:
Well, it’s a theory that, if we can separate people, that we can buy the time before vaccines have been available. But it hadn’t been attempted on a 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:
The essential personnel constitutes approximately a third of the force of paintings that had to continue making their paintings in the user of the locks.
And, therefore, 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 exhibits how these states have done?
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 budget costs, the mandatory amount of loan to finance closures. It is more or less equivalent as a component of GDP with what we spend on the New Deal and the 2009 monetary rescue.
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.
I think we have to make sure that we are open to dissent and that we are open to dissent when it comes to the other side. One of the things we discover is that pandemic has polarized very. The 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 networks, freedom of expression, as you say, the debate of the mask. I can’t do it here.
I thank both of them. The e-book is called “On Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us. “
Frances Lee, Stephen Macedo, thank you very much.
Stephen Macedo:
Thank you William.
Frances Lee:
Thank you.
William Brangham is a correspondent awarded, producer and at the time of PBS news.
THANK YOU. Please check your reception box to confirm.
© 1996 – 2025 Newshour Productions LLC. All rights reserved.
PBS is a non -profit organization 501 (c) (3).
Thank you. Please, your entrance tray to confirm.