Based on my own epidmelogical background and dealing with the CDC say 1979-1980, I here on TBR, provided very clear suggestions on how to handle the pandemic. And the intergral part of that was isolating and protecting the elderly, and the most at risk.... allowing normal people to establish and develop herd immunity, with the aid of common sense disinfection and protection. What Fauci, with Trump's endorsement , and the rest of public health community did was actually prolong the thing, based on my estimates 6 months to a year.
Kind of like last night on Tucker Carlson.... His A Block pretty much followed what I have been screaming for years around the Chicoms Russia, and currency realignment.
Sorry I am in gloat mode right now.
There was plenty of information publicly available within the first couple months of the pandemic that showed the CDC had gotten it materially wrong. I noticed it first in my own state (Ohio) statistics in early
April when the government numbers of the number currently infected, the purported 2% fatality rate, and number of actual deaths (allowing for lag time) weren't even
close to adding up. It was very clear early on that the disease was much less fatal than the CDC had claimed when it made its initial recommendations for a shutdown. All you had to do was look at the data that the government itself was producing. And yet, rather than sticking to the idea of just "flattening the curve" The CDC doubled down and made those restrictions long-term.
The other thing that quickly became very obvious was that the death rate for anyone not in a high risk group was
incredibly low. That was easily apparent to anyone who did a modest amount of reading by May/June 2020 at the very latest.
I also think it was fundamentally flawed to look at the pandemic and the appropriate response solely as a medical/health problem, which is exactly what people like Trump did in saying that they were going to listen to "follow the science.". That was a complete and unjustifiable abdication of executive responsibility.
In making any policy,
you always weigh the costs versus the benefits. Looking only at the health care side of things meant that you were only looking at the medical benefits of the CDC recommendation, but
completely ignoring the social and economic cost of those recommendations. That includes everything from lost enjoyment of life, to people having their economic futures turned upside down, to children losing out on critical years of social development time, and even teenagers and young adults just having fun like they're supposed to. Elderly people were dying completely
alone, separate from any family, because of the damn CDC recommendations.
Hell, that wasn't entirely even Fauci's fault. He was just a medical doctor, so his job was to make purely
medical recommendations. It was the job of our elected leaders to balance the benefits of those medical recommendations with the social and economic costs of a lockdown.
So we sacrificed all of that - gave none of it any weight at all - In the name of "following the science". Trump is as guilty of that as anyone. Of course, not having little kids in school, and having complete freedom in his social life meant that he didn't feel that as much as did the rest of us ordinary people.
I absolutely despise the man for that abdication of leadership, and what it did to this country.
