No identical pieces were found
Nancy Messonnier
FD Flam, Tribuna Press
In the third week of March 2020, with little public debate and fewer warnings, Americans were asked to stay home indefinitely as COVID cases rose. There were only a few days between the mild assurances and the shutdown orders—just enough time to panic and buy toilet paper. The first year of the pandemic represents a different crisis than the era after vaccines became widely available. Congress deserves to create something like the 9/11 Commission (independent and bipartisan) to reexamine why our initial reaction was so disturbing and yet so ineffective. A report released in time for the anniversary of the start of the pandemic next year may also identify weaknesses in the country’s overall inability to cope with whatever the next crisis may be. Some insightful analyzes covering that first year were recently published in Lessons From the COVID War, by a panel of scientists and policy experts, and The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind” » via sleuths Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean. But the official bipartisan solution would have a fundamental impact on our polarized nation.
Such a commission deserves to first read why our elected leaders and qualified agencies did not warn the public sooner. By early February 2020, there was strong evidence that this disease had already spread far beyond Wuhan, China, that it could spread invisibly through mild cases, and that older people were most at risk. Just Caution may have helped others take voluntary steps to avoid infection and prepare for disruption. But for much of January and February we got false assurances. Even as Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on February 25 that the virus could cause “severe” disruptions, CDC Deputy Director Anne Schuchat responded by saying that “our containment efforts worked. ” ”. It wasn’t until mid-March that the White House declared a national COVID emergency. Delays in issuing clear warnings were part of a perverse effect of time on a crisis. The timing of protective measures was important. The same applies to the moment chosen to lift or modify those measures. It’s best for people to stick to sacrifices that have a set duration and a realistic goal. Waiting to heed warnings and directives until the disease became widespread meant more deaths and the need for more extreme measures to achieve the same level of mitigation. And it’s not hindsight bias to say that excessive measures like schools, businesses, and public events ending would have been less destructive if they had been implemented over two or three weeks instead of months.
Scenes of other people dying in hospital corridors in Italy gave the impression that drastic measures were needed in the United States to “flatten the curve” of infection, but there was no clinical justification for trying to eliminate an already widespread virus while maintaining excessive measures. . in the long run. A COVID commission could also take a look at what government, employers, and communities could have done to prevent deaths among essential staff and their families. While Americans saw limited innovations in the policy of paid leave for lack of fitness, the scenario demanded more. Essential workers who were in danger or living with others with a fragile physical condition were able to decide to leave their jobs, and their jobs were temporarily taken over by many younger, physically fit Americans who were fearless and whose intellectual aptitude might have changed. He stepped forward with Contriyete’s opportunity instead of being locked up alone.
And a special investigation could also help eliminate the weak excuse that American leaders made bad decisions due to a lack of knowledge about a new virus. Even at the beginning of 2020, we had enough data to act more rationally. By early April, there was already evidence that the virus was spreading primarily indoors through the air and that there was very little threat outdoors. The abrupt closures of businesses, schools, beaches, and parks threw this wisdom out the window, and it did not constitute a clinical consensus. Michael Osterholm, director of the Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, co-authored a Washington Post op-ed published on March 21, 2020, warning that widespread, indefinite lockdowns were not the course of action more productive to save lives: a choice. It will most likely involve allowing other people at low risk of severe illness to continue working, keep business and production operations running, and “run” society, while advising other people at higher risk to protect ourselves by physically distancing and our health. ability to care in the most competitive way possible.
It’s possible that a targeted strategy simply exploited what scientists had discerned about who was at the highest risk of dying and what types of paintings were most threatening. Osterholm supported this view when I spoke with him this month. the first to make me think of a 9/11 commission for COVID. ) He reminded me that he is in favor of short-term measures to curb the rate of spread and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. And he worried that long-term lockdowns would increase the death toll among “essential painters,” many of whom suffered from health conditions that put them at greater risk, or lived in overcrowded housing with elderly relatives. His considerations came true.
Lockdowns have made homes more crowded: students are moving in with their families, school-age youth are staying home, and others are spending much more time in their homes or in their constituents. Epidemiologists have shown that hours of household exposure cause far more cases than exposures. less than 30 minutes. Again, time matters. A COVID commission would also deserve to measure the lasting effect of those early failures. After vaccines were introduced, the U. S. began to see far more deaths than other comparably wealthy countries. Vaccination rates were lower, in part because the public fitness network had lost public trust in the first year.