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.

 https://jabberwocking.com/a-look-back-at-what-covid-was-really-like/