Thinking Citizen Blog — “Covid Lessons Learned; Four Years Later” (WSJ) “An Object Lesson From Covid On How To Destroy Public Trust” (NYT)
Thinking Citizen Blog: Thursday is Health, Health Care, and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: “Covid Lessons Learned; Four Years Later” (WSJ) “An Object Lesson from Covid on How To Destroy Public Trust” (NYT)
So what are the lessons learned from Covid? What should kids be taught in 5th grade , 8th grade, 12th grade? college? Are all opinions on the subject created equal? Whom would you trust?
Today, excerpts from two articles. The first from Zeynep Tufeckci, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton and columnist at the New York Times,. The second from Scott W. Atlas, a radiologist and fellow at the Hoover Institution and Steven h. Hanke, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins.
Were school closings the worst mistake of all? Would the US have had 1.6 million fewer deaths if it had adopted the less restrictive policies that Sweden did? Were the benefits of lockdowns minimal?
Best article you have read on the subject?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“AS THE EXPRESSION GOES, TRUST IS BUILT IN DROPS AND LOST IN BUCKETS, AND THIS BUCKET IS GOING TO TAKE A VERY LONG TIME TO REFILL” (Zeynep Tufekci, NYT)
1. “I hope the pandemic both as lived experience and now as rewritten history, has proved that paternalistic, infantilizing messages backfires.”
2. “Transparency and accountability work.”
3. “And studies have shown that once people lose trust in institutions, they become more open to conspiracy theories — not just whatever specific topic might be in dispute, but across the board.”
“ALL CAUSE EXCESS DEATHS IN THE US: 12.7% FROM JAN 2020 T0 APRIL 2023 COMPARED TO 3.5% FOR SWEDEN” (Atlas and Hanke, WSJ) — is this the most important number to focus on? If not, what is? how about the learning loss from school closings?
1. “Perhaps the worst policy error was prolonged school closings.”
2. “Learning loss for children, especially in poor families, is already showing up in reduced standardized-test scores.”
3. “These losses will affect earnings for decades.”
NB: “By one estimate today’s children will lose $17 trillion in earnings owing to school closings. They may also suffer shorter life expectancy, which is linked to income and educational attainment.”
“THE ECONOMIC COSTS OF THE LOCKDOWNS WERE STAGGERING” — whose statistics would you trust?
1. “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 49 million Americans were out of work in May 2020.”
2. “This shock had health consequences.”
3. “A National Bureau of Economic Research studey found that the lockdown unemployment shock is projected to result in 840,000 to 1.22 million excess deaths over the next 15 to 20 years, disproportionately killing women and minorities.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/opinion/covid-fauci-hearings-health.html
Opinion | Covid Lessons Learned, Four Years Later
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history….
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
