Fisking the anti-vaxxers
Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum has a systematic take-down of the anti-vaxxer propaganda on COVID19:
• The reason the CDC initially recommended against wearing masks was because they thought you could just avoid people who were sick, so it was best to reserve limited supplies for doctors, who couldn’t avoid sick people. When researchers discovered that COVID could be asymptomatic—which meant you couldn’t tell if someone was sick—they changed their advice;
• The CDC never recommended that kids not be allowed to play outside due to the risk of infected playground surfaces. This was something put in place by local officials who were being urged by parents to be ultra cautious;
• The CDC didn’t recommend that schools remain closed. Quite the opposite. Closure decisions were made locally, usually with the strong support of parents;
• In any case, it’s unlikely that school closures caused much harm. Test scores generally fell about the same in states that kept schools open;
• Businesses were not shut down for an entire year. Shutdowns were ordered in both red and blue states and generally lasted only about three months;
• Nobody ever said the lab leak theory for the origin of the virus was impossible. Every scientist who looked at the question said we couldn’t know for sure but the evidence pointed strongly to a natural origin. They said this because it was true;
• A lot of public health experts did say it was OK to join the George Floyd protests because they were more important than stopping the spread of COVID. This was stupid;
• That said, this is an example of health experts considering the social impacts of their recommendations. It’s just not true that they never considered tradeoffs. They considered them constantly;
• Epidemiologists initially said that COVID was spread by droplets. That’s because the evidence pointed that way. When evidence piled up that aerosol transmission was also important, they changed their public statements. But their safety guidance didn’t change, because in most cases it didn’t matter how the virus was spread. Standard epidemic hygiene was mostly the same either way;
• Dr. Fauci did not admit recently that the CDC just made up its social distancing rule. He said only that he wasn’t sure where the specific six-foot guidance came from.
Not that Trump, RFK Jr, Fox or the rest of the right-wing wind machine care about the actual, you know, facts.
The facts about COVID19
• The reason the CDC initially recommended against wearing masks was because they thought you could just avoid people who were sick, so it was best to reserve limited supplies for doctors, who couldn’t avoid sick people. When researchers discovered that COVID could be asymptomatic—which meant you couldn’t tell if someone was sick—they changed their advice;
• The CDC never recommended that kids not be allowed to play outside due to the risk of infected playground surfaces. This was something put in place by local officials who were being urged by parents to be ultra cautious;
• The CDC didn’t recommend that schools remain closed. Quite the opposite. Closure decisions were made locally, usually with the strong support of parents;
• In any case, it’s unlikely that school closures caused much harm. Test scores generally fell about the same in states that kept schools open;
• Businesses were not shut down for an entire year. Shutdowns were ordered in both red and blue states and generally lasted only about three months;
• Nobody ever said the lab leak theory for the origin of the virus was impossible. Every scientist who looked at the question said we couldn’t know for sure but the evidence pointed strongly to a natural origin. They said this because it was true;
• A lot of public health experts did say it was OK to join the George Floyd protests because they were more important than stopping the spread of COVID. This was stupid;
• That said, this is an example of health experts considering the social impacts of their recommendations. It’s just not true that they never considered tradeoffs. They considered them constantly;
• Epidemiologists initially said that COVID was spread by droplets. That’s because the evidence pointed that way. When evidence piled up that aerosol transmission was also important, they changed their public statements. But their safety guidance didn’t change, because in most cases it didn’t matter how the virus was spread. Standard epidemic hygiene was mostly the same either way;
• Dr. Fauci did not admit recently that the CDC just made up its social distancing rule. He said only that he wasn’t sure where the specific six-foot guidance came from.
Not that Trump, RFK Jr, Fox or the rest of the right-wing wind machine care about the actual, you know, facts.
The facts about COVID19
I suspect that all the “COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t work” because vaccinated individuals could still get the disease came from bad actors who counted on the fact that most earlier vaccines did prevent the disease. None of the trials used that as a criteria. The vaccine was tested for its ability to prevent severe cases = hospitalized (in ICU) or dead. J&J was the only original trial that even tested for the presence of the disease. The first time a vaccinated individual tested positive, they were off to the races with “doesn’t work,”
Yes. They weren’t challenge trials, but they were blinded placebo-controlled. I was in the Moderna trial.
“When researchers discovered that COVID could be asymptomatic” they did not do enough to inform the public about the implications. Nuances are difficult, but (my personal opinion is that) they should have done more on educating people. I do not think I heard “You can’t always know if you are contagious, so we are asking you to make this sacrifice to protect people who may be more susceptible.”
@Arne,
“I do not think I heard “You can’t always know if you are contagious, so we are asking you to make this sacrifice to protect people who may be more susceptible.””
What you may have heard and what was said can be two different things. Hearing and listening aren’t the same.
I certainly had no problem getting the message. Not that I needed to be told–it was obvious.
Whatever has happened to COVID vaccine uptakes seems to have some broader explanations than Trump/RFK Jr./Fox. Mid August 2022 data on initial vaccines was 79% of all Americans had at least one dose and 67% had the full series. Mid-November 2024 had 19% of adult Americans having had the latest booster and 12% more saying they plan on it. I know quite a few folks who voted Harris and probably have no idea how to find Fox and took the vaccine but by mid-2023 were done with it and haven’t come back. An odd thing is that mostly they can’t seem to convincingly say why exactly. They just stopped after the main series and sometimes one booster.
@Eric,
No surprise here. COVID is out of the news, so most people don’t feel the urgency to get boosted.
You get vaccinated for, e.g., smallpox, polio, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, measles and rubella, and it’s good for life. Not so for COVID. I don’t know if most people realize that the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is different from those other shots. SARS-CoV-2 is rapidly evolving and there’s a benefit from getting the updated booster.
One specific thing that has confused many people I know about masks is the notion of aerosol transmission. I think many believe that individual virus particles float around and even great masks are too coarse to trap them. As far as I know, the “viral package” of an aerosol is pretty much the same as for droplets, just at small diameters such that the random movement of air in a room is enough to keep them afloat, whereas for droplet-sized “packages” the mass is such that gravity quickly pulls it down to a surface….floor, countertop, whatever. But the aerosol mean size is still way bigger than the virus itself. Is this correct? I think it is, but not a ventilation expert at all.
@Eric,
Essentially correct.
A cloth or unfitted N95 mask will protect others from you if you are coughing or sneezing. But aerosolized particles (small enough to remain suspended in air for significant periods) can get through the fabric of a cloth mask and of course around the sides of a cloth or unfitted N95. Aerosolized particles of course become diluted as they disperse and they also dry out and get inactivated. You aren’t going to get a fulminating infection from a single virus particle.
A problem with the decision to not tell people to use masks so that they could be reserved for health care providers is that that reason was not given. As a result the health authorities were credibly charged with lying and that severely damaged their credibility on other issues as the situation continued.
@Jack,
I don’t believe that that was a major issue during COVID. Yes, it’s now being used as a bloody shirt by the right, but I haven’t seen evidence that a significant number of people were sickened or died specifically due to that guidance, or failed to follow other guidance specifically for that reason. Strikes me as some retrospective ad-hockery.
The fact came out during the pandemic, when it was well underway and I recall a number of acquaintances pooh-poohing various recommendations and guidance statements thereafter including huge resistance to school closings and remote sessions throughout the country. As you say, it’s cited now by resistors but it definitely caused problems during the pandemic. Many of those problems were political as opposed to medical but I’m sure that contagion was increased after disclosure. Deaths? I don’t know. Infections? Speculative but I’d guess a lot.