What the Blue state COVID fighters got wrong by Justin Fox read by Bob Danielson. As COVID nineteen began to sweep across the US five years ago, states run by Democratic governors were quicker than those run by Republicans to shut down schools, offices, and restaurants. As the pandemic wore on. They were much slower to reopen and much more willing to impose mask mandates and other precautionary measures. How many lives did this more cautious approach save not many, by the looks of it. At the end of twenty twenty, democratic and Republican states had experienced nearly identical numbers of COVID nineteen deaths relative to population. The blue state totals were perhaps inflated by high mortality in four Northeastern states where COVID spread widely before anti pandemic measures were imposed in March twenty twenty, but even with them excluded, there was no clear partisan pattern. This changed in a big way as vaccines became widely available in twenty twenty one. States with low vaccination rates, which were disproportionately read, began to report far higher mortality than those with high vaccination rates, which were disproportionately blue. One twenty twenty three study that linked party registration and deaths data in Florida and Ohio found a sharp increase in excess mortality among Republicans relative to Democrats after the vaccine rollout. This evidence that COVID vaccines saved lives is extremely powerful, and it is weird and unsettling that vaccine reticence has nonetheless grown among Republicans over the past few years, with a vaccine skeptic recently confirmed as the nation's new Secretary of Health and Human Services. But it's also weird and unsettling how little discussion there has been among Democratic politicians and public health experts about the disappointing record of the so called non pharmaceutical interventions they championed. The latter blind spot is the chief target of In COVID's Wake, How Our Politics Failed US Princeton University Press, March eleven, Authored by Princeton University political scientists Stephen Messito and Francis Lee, the book is a critical self examination of the elite consensus that coalesced in the early months of the pandemic around a maximalist COVID fighting approach, and which became, if anything, less tolerant of dissenting views, even as shutdowns exacted huge costs and delivered disappointing results. Messito and Lee also provide a detailed account of how prominent scientists came to insist publicly that the pandemic was of natural origin, even though some of them suspected that COVID nineteen might have escaped from an infectious disease research lab in Wuhan, China. Nothing Messito and Lee have to report is news, really, but their calm, methodical recital of the facts and general refusal to impute nefarious intent to anybody is quite powerful in effect vaccines aside. The US response to COVID was kind of a disaster, and blaming Donald Trump and his crazy virus fighting advice only gets us so far. Reading the book sent me back with some amount of cringing. Through my own modest contributions to COVID opinion shaping. I have no background in infectious diseases or science journalism, but I do work a lot with numbers. Early in March twenty twenty, I ran the available estimates on COVID's fatality and reproduction rates compared them with the seasonal flu and came up with a potential one year US death toll of three hundred thousand to six hundred thousand people. The actual number turned out to be somewhere between four hundred ninety thousand the official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention taally of deaths attributed to COVID as the underlying cause, and six hundred fifty thousand, an estimate based on the total number of deaths in excess of expected leffs. No need to cringe about that one then, and most of my subsequent numbers based pandemic work holds up upon rereading, But my attempts to interpret scientific advice on what to do about COVID now feel much less successful. Like a lot of other people, including public health officials, I had a tendency to endorse the enthusiasms of the moment. Staying home, testing and tracing, wearing masks, staying away from other people is in fact a quite effective way of avoiding COVID, But stay at home policies that were relatively feasible for members of what Messito and Lee called the laptop class proved extremely costly for others, and in some cases counterproductive because workplaces were safer than crowded homes, and while short school closures have long been a part of the epidemic fighting toolbox, keeping schools closed for more than a year, as some cities did left a legacy of learning loss and absenteeism that far outweighed any benefits. Testing and tracing can be effective, too, but not once infections were widespread. As for face masks, there's reason to believe that they may help in raining in a disease like COVID that's spread by coughing and sneezing, especially when worn by the coffers and sneezers, but not much evidence that large scale mask bandates had much effect, as Mesito and Lee show in their book. Expert opinion was divided leading up to the pandemic on the proper role of such non pharmaceutical interventions in battling a respiratory disease epidemic. The Chinese government's decision to fight COVID with a strict lockdown and its apparent success quickly changed the dynamic. World Health Organization Director General tedros Gebreesis praised the Chinese approach as well as the less draconian but very high effort test and trace regimes of other East Asian countries. It was a little hard to imagine such policies, ever, succeeding in the individualistic US, with its suspicion of authority. In the early days, the motivation for school and business closures in America was usually expressed as a need to crush the curve, slow the pace of infections to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, rather than stop the disease outright. But after the first COVID wave did in fact recede, justifications for restrictions kept evolving. As Mesito and lee Wright, policymakers never explicitly and clearly disavowed containment as a policy objective, no matter how quick sodic it was. Indeed, to have done so would have been in the eyes of many, surrender instead reopening. A return to normal could not happen until it was safe. But what constituted safety Short of COVID's elimination. This was not necessarily a case of officials imposing policies on an unwilling public. Where pandemic restrictions remained in place, local voters generally seemed to want them where they disappeared in the summer of twenty twenty. A majority was happy with that too. In that sense, you could call the US pandemic response a democratic success. It was a failure, though, of democratic discourse. Americans talked past one another, with a mostly democratic health policy and media elite boxing out dissenting views and mostly Republican contrarians rejecting even well supported recommendations from elite institutions. These two groups weren't and aren't equivalent. Messito and Lee's book is an example of elite reconsideration and critique that you would be hard pressed to find among say, vaccine skeptics. But both groups shared a distrust of those outside their circle that at times made it hard for either group to see straight. As an example of this, Mesito and Lee cite a study published in twenty twenty three in an American Medical Association journal about misinformation spread by physicians. Among the examples cited by the six public health scholar authors were these five claims, as summed up by Messito and Lee. One, the virus originated in a laboratory in China, was part of a National Institute's of Health funded study, was leaked, and the leak was covered up by government and other public health officials. Two government and public health officials withheld key information regarding COVID nineteen from the public. Three, the effectiveness of masks was doubtful and masking imposed special costs on children. Four. Natural infection and recovery contribute effectively to population level or herd immunity, as well as or better than vaccines do. Five Government actors were in contact with Twitter and other social media companies, telling them what to censor and in many cases, who to censor regarding COVID nineteen information were These talking points often couched in more inflammatory language than above, and often accompanied by demonstrably false assertions. Sure, but they're also all true or at least possibly true. My own particular myopia in pandemic journalism was assuming that the people who seemed to get things right in the beginning would keep getting it right. But the infectious disease experts who quickly figured out how deadly and infectious COVID nineteen was and correctly identified it as a huge global threat didn't necessarily know much about politics, economics, or human behavior. Follow the science was a phrase heard frequently during the pandemic and Messito and Lee are not fans. Not only was it used to paper over scientific disagreement, they write, but it expressed an impossibility. Science cannot tell us what we ought to do. Big policy choices like how to combat a pandemic entail value judgments and trade offs. The lingering question of the COVID pandemic, and the one most relevant to whatever the next global crisis turns out to be, is not whether masking did or did not work. It's how a democracy can find a middle ground between dismissing the experts outright and deferring to them uncritically. This is fighting requires technical knowledge, but expertise can only get you so far.

What the Blue state COVID fighters got wrong by Justin Fox read by Bob Danielson. As COVID nineteen began to sweep across the US five years ago, states run by Democratic governors were quicker than those run by Republicans to shut down schools, offices, and restaurants. As the pandemic wore on. They were much slower to reopen and much more willing to impose mask mandates and other precautionary measures. How many lives did this more cautious approach save not many, by the looks of it. At the end of twenty twenty, democratic and Republican states had experienced nearly identical numbers of COVID nineteen deaths relative to population. The blue state totals were perhaps inflated by high mortality in four Northeastern states where COVID spread widely before anti pandemic measures were imposed in March twenty twenty, but even with them excluded, there was no clear partisan pattern. This changed in a big way as vaccines became widely available in twenty twenty one. States with low vaccination rates, which were disproportionately read, began to report far higher mortality than those with high vaccination rates, which were disproportionately blue. One twenty twenty three study that linked party registration and deaths data in Florida and Ohio found a sharp increase in excess mortality among Republicans relative to Democrats after the vaccine rollout. This evidence that COVID vaccines saved lives is extremely powerful, and it is weird and unsettling that vaccine reticence has nonetheless grown among Republicans over the past few years, with a vaccine skeptic recently confirmed as the nation's new Secretary of Health and Human Services. But it's also weird and unsettling how little discussion there has been among Democratic politicians and public health experts about the disappointing record of the so called non pharmaceutical interventions they championed. The latter blind spot is the chief target of In COVID's Wake, How Our Politics Failed US Princeton University Press, March eleven, Authored by Princeton University political scientists Stephen Messito and Francis Lee, the book is a critical self examination of the elite consensus that coalesced in the early months of the pandemic around a maximalist COVID fighting approach, and which became, if anything, less tolerant of dissenting views, even as shutdowns exacted huge costs and delivered disappointing results. Messito and Lee also provide a detailed account of how prominent scientists came to insist publicly that the pandemic was of natural origin, even though some of them suspected that COVID nineteen might have escaped from an infectious disease research lab in Wuhan, China. Nothing Messito and Lee have to report is news, really, but their calm, methodical recital of the facts and general refusal to impute nefarious intent to anybody is quite powerful in effect vaccines aside. The US response to COVID was kind of a disaster, and blaming Donald Trump and his crazy virus fighting advice only gets us so far. Reading the book sent me back with some amount of cringing. Through my own modest contributions to COVID opinion shaping. I have no background in infectious diseases or science journalism, but I do work a lot with numbers. Early in March twenty twenty, I ran the available estimates on COVID's fatality and reproduction rates compared them with the seasonal flu and came up with a potential one year US death toll of three hundred thousand to six hundred thousand people. The actual number turned out to be somewhere between four hundred ninety thousand the official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention taally of deaths attributed to COVID as the underlying cause, and six hundred fifty thousand, an estimate based on the total number of deaths in excess of expected leffs. No need to cringe about that one then, and most of my subsequent numbers based pandemic work holds up upon rereading, But my attempts to interpret scientific advice on what to do about COVID now feel much less successful. Like a lot of other people, including public health officials, I had a tendency to endorse the enthusiasms of the moment. Staying home, testing and tracing, wearing masks, staying away from other people is in fact a quite effective way of avoiding COVID, But stay at home policies that were relatively feasible for members of what Messito and Lee called the laptop class proved extremely costly for others, and in some cases counterproductive because workplaces were safer than crowded homes, and while short school closures have long been a part of the epidemic fighting toolbox, keeping schools closed for more than a year, as some cities did left a legacy of learning loss and absenteeism that far outweighed any benefits. Testing and tracing can be effective, too, but not once infections were widespread. As for face masks, there's reason to believe that they may help in raining in a disease like COVID that's spread by coughing and sneezing, especially when worn by the coffers and sneezers, but not much evidence that large scale mask bandates had much effect, as Mesito and Lee show in their book. Expert opinion was divided leading up to the pandemic on the proper role of such non pharmaceutical interventions in battling a respiratory disease epidemic. The Chinese government's decision to fight COVID with a strict lockdown and its apparent success quickly changed the dynamic. World Health Organization Director General tedros Gebreesis praised the Chinese approach as well as the less draconian but very high effort test and trace regimes of other East Asian countries. It was a little hard to imagine such policies, ever, succeeding in the individualistic US, with its suspicion of authority. In the early days, the motivation for school and business closures in America was usually expressed as a need to crush the curve, slow the pace of infections to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, rather than stop the disease outright. But after the first COVID wave did in fact recede, justifications for restrictions kept evolving. As Mesito and lee Wright, policymakers never explicitly and clearly disavowed containment as a policy objective, no matter how quick sodic it was. Indeed, to have done so would have been in the eyes of many, surrender instead reopening. A return to normal could not happen until it was safe. But what constituted safety Short of COVID's elimination. This was not necessarily a case of officials imposing policies on an unwilling public. Where pandemic restrictions remained in place, local voters generally seemed to want them where they disappeared in the summer of twenty twenty. A majority was happy with that too. In that sense, you could call the US pandemic response a democratic success. It was a failure, though, of democratic discourse. Americans talked past one another, with a mostly democratic health policy and media elite boxing out dissenting views and mostly Republican contrarians rejecting even well supported recommendations from elite institutions. These two groups weren't and aren't equivalent. Messito and Lee's book is an example of elite reconsideration and critique that you would be hard pressed to find among say, vaccine skeptics. But both groups shared a distrust of those outside their circle that at times made it hard for either group to see straight. As an example of this, Mesito and Lee cite a study published in twenty twenty three in an American Medical Association journal about misinformation spread by physicians. Among the examples cited by the six public health scholar authors were these five claims, as summed up by Messito and Lee. One, the virus originated in a laboratory in China, was part of a National Institute's of Health funded study, was leaked, and the leak was covered up by government and other public health officials. Two government and public health officials withheld key information regarding COVID nineteen from the public. Three, the effectiveness of masks was doubtful and masking imposed special costs on children. Four. Natural infection and recovery contribute effectively to population level or herd immunity, as well as or better than vaccines do. Five Government actors were in contact with Twitter and other social media companies, telling them what to censor and in many cases, who to censor regarding COVID nineteen information were These talking points often couched in more inflammatory language than above, and often accompanied by demonstrably false assertions. Sure, but they're also all true or at least possibly true. My own particular myopia in pandemic journalism was assuming that the people who seemed to get things right in the beginning would keep getting it right. But the infectious disease experts who quickly figured out how deadly and infectious COVID nineteen was and correctly identified it as a huge global threat didn't necessarily know much about politics, economics, or human behavior. Follow the science was a phrase heard frequently during the pandemic and Messito and Lee are not fans. Not only was it used to paper over scientific disagreement, they write, but it expressed an impossibility. Science cannot tell us what we ought to do. Big policy choices like how to combat a pandemic entail value judgments and trade offs. The lingering question of the COVID pandemic, and the one most relevant to whatever the next global crisis turns out to be, is not whether masking did or did not work. It's how a democracy can find a middle ground between dismissing the experts outright and deferring to them uncritically. This is fighting requires technical knowledge, but expertise can only get you so far.