The real misinformation was COVIDZero

Covidzero zealots continue to harm us with their deranged policy view

The most extreme group of risk intolerant individuals has done us a profound disservice during the pandemic. First, these people are often well-off and capable of sheltering themselves away from others. (Lockdowns & school shutdowns are luxuries they can bear) Second, they routinely and falsely claim that their policies protect minorities and low income people, when those policies do the precise opposite: protect the rich and transfer wealth upward. Third, they are never content with merely sheltering themselves, they wish to use brute force to compel others to do things that they think helps them, even if there is no data supporting those things, or they have been proven to not work. Let’s run through some recent history.

While the initial school closure in March 2020 may be forgivable— we didn’t know — not reopening in the fall of 2020 was a colossal blunder. Many ‘experts’ set impossible standards for schools to reopen, which effectively kept them closed for a year, doing immeasurable damage. In contrast, most western democracies in Europe opened fast, such as Norway and Switzerland. Sweden famously never closed primary school.

This was a discussion from the summer of 2020— the deleted tweet I believe referred to a decision to close schools in the fall in the mid Atlantic region.

Watch as Wes Pegden pressures one person on the wrong side of history about what it will take to reopen. His answer: I have no clue. But we did know. We knew from Europe that reopening was feasible & we also knew the harms from closure would be immense. Wes points out this armchair policy proclamation lacks a framework. It was not just wrong in retrospect, it was ill conceived at the time, and did colossal damage.

Next fast forward to the vaccine rollout. Risk intolerant folks pushed for young health care workers and teachers to be prioritized over the elderly. But teachers took the vax, and still put up barriers to return to work (in many locations). And a young resident physician had a far lower risk of bad outcomes (even factoring the modest elevation in risk from occupation) than an older person. The rollout was suboptimal.

But it didn’t stop there….