These recommendations are reasonable as alternative strategies, but none of them address the thesis question: how to protect science from COVID politics. COVID did not destroy science; it revealed how corrupt science has become. Better COVID strategies are indeed necessary, but they are likely to be infeasible unless and until politics is removed from science.
I suggest reducing government funding by 90%. That’s what politicized science.
I hope someone will be able to get word back to Dr. Prasad so that he would be able to publicize that it looks like most of the tragic cases of post-vaccination myocarditis would be avoided by correcting the manner in which the injections are done.
It is essential that the mRNA vaccines be delivered into muscle tissue only, and to prevent delivery of the mRNA vaccines into veins.
Proper avoidance of delivery into a vein can be assured only if “aspiration” is performed after the needle is inserted but prior to actually injecting the vaccine.
A comparative study between Norway - which didn’t use the aspiration technique - and Denmark - which uses it - highlighted that Norway had 2.4 times higher rate of myocarditis than Denmark.
I disagree.. Not everything is relative. There sre objective truths. The age at death from Covid exceeded the US life expectancy. It was not a threat to the young. We could have freed them while protecting the old and vulnerable. We did neither. “We” as in mostly progressive Democrat mayors and governors and their drooling acolytes.
I don't agree that the age at death from Covid exceeded US life expectancy. It is not just a threat to old people but also obese people. People were dying at many different ages.
I remember the following concern:
If the young can transmit it to older people and obese, then do we segregate the young from the old? How do we do that in households with children and close contact with older and obese people? How do we do that in educational settings where the teachers have to come in close contact with the children? Do we now have to keep older and obese people in special areas?
We did what we did based on the information we had at the time. As Prasad points out, a lot of it was flawed. We also had constant conflict with the government (this was under a Republican president back then and now under a Democrat president). We don't adapt and change to new information well. Instead we wait too long and point fingers at people who believed the now out-of-date information. We don't have accepted criteria on when to change.
At some point in the future, we won't need masks at all anywhere, and everyone agrees. What are the steps to get to that future point? How do we agree?
It doesn’t matter if you agree. About 899k ppl have died from Covid. Over 462k are over 75. US life expectancy is about 77 years. That’s pretty close. Do the math from the data. You can find it on Statista.
Agree Publius_x. Parents don’t necessarily treat kids equitably. If one needs special attention the rest of the family will sacrifice accordingly. Best advice I got when I created a trust when my children were young and I was thinking in terms of equality vs need.
Someone should send Dr. Vinay's clear-minded and penetrating enlightenment to a certain Canadian prime minister, who's lately been trying to turn Ottawa into Tienneman Square.
Other than the elderly, the other very vulnerable group was the obese. But progressives didn't want to stigmatize the obese and overweight so we all had to be treated as if we were as at risk as people who choose to eat more food than they need.
See this article from the NY Times early on in the pandemic: "Coronavirus Ravages 7 Members of a Single Family, Killing 4"
The photo shows a group of people who are all, to use the correct technical term, obese or morbidly obese. But nobody will discuss the elephant in the room.
It would have been great to see if masks really work, but we now have no way of knowing. Few people actually wore masks properly, in a way that medical professionals use them. Early on, if they had trained a group of people who were likely to comply with the use of "splash masks" and N-95 masks, and compared them to a control group, we could have known quickly if they were effective at all. So many opportunities to do controlled experiments to advance public health with little downside were squandered.
Early on in the pandemic, I saw a video of a group of people, few of them experts in anything, deciding who should get the yet-to-be-produced vaccine first. They did this based on who they felt was the most "oppressed" -- not who would benefit most from them. To "ensure equity" in their words.
Like it or not, it may have been that the most 'privileged' among us -- those who travel the most, young people who will gather for spring break no matter what -- who would have been the most optimal group to first receive the vaccine (had it actually helped stop transmission). We'll never know, because nobody was basing these decisions on medical facts.
This is a very well-written, argued, and sourced piece about our Covid response and how we can and should adjust to current and future reality. Thank you, Dr. Prasad.
The political leanings of Mr. Prasad are embarrassingly evident in this shoddy column. Much of his advice is already well understood by most scientists. Do randomized testing! Brilliant! Why didn't any other scientists think of that?
No one is going to get the science and the public policy exactly right on something as complex and ever-changing as a pandemic, but one thing I've learned for certain is that the experts (like the CDC, NIH and Dr. Fauci) are much better at discerning truth from nonsense than right-wing media pundits.
Dennis Prager is a perfect example of what I mean. Prager says that masks don't work. He claims that the vaccines don't work. He claims that HCQ and Ivermectin cure covid, and that the medical establishment is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in America because they don't prescribe these useless drugs. Non of that is based in science. Prager simply pulled it out of his substantial rear end.
Prager also says that he no longer trusts doctors and the medical establishment because "they're all corrupt", without citing a single example of any actual corruption. Few people have done more to undermine our country's response to the pandemic than Dennis Prager, with the possible exception of Robert Kennedy Jr.
No single group has done more to politicize the pandemic than right-wing media. Right-wing media is why we have such a low vaccination rate, and such a high death rate. (Right-wing media is also why so many Americans believe that Trump won the 2020 election, and why we had a violent insurrection committed by a bunch of delusional lunatics.)
Also, simply protecting the vulnerable is much easier said than done because sooner or later they have to come into contact with other people who could be carrying the virus and not even know it. I've yet to see a country successfully protect the vulnerable while allowing everyone else to go about life as normal. Protecting the vulnerable sounds nice, but in practice it doesn't work.
Also, I wonder why Dr Prasad didn't cite Australia, S Korea and New Zealand as examples of successful public policy. Actually, I don't. His politics is clearly obfuscating his ability to think clearly.
All great points, I'll quibble with: "people who have been infected with Covid should only have to get one dose of vaccine, not the three now recommended by the CDC." Nobody should "have to get" ANY dose. Let everyone make the choice for themselves, based on their individual circumstances, which are infinitely varied.
What to do with the comments from presumed “experts”, like that which I received below when questioning school closure and mandates 18 months ago?:
“The bad news is that they do indeed shed the virus even when minimally or asymptomatic, meaning kids are a threat to public health even if they personally are probably safe--and even if their own families are willing to take that risk for themselves. The situation is more complex and compelling than ever, given the appearance of more-communicable variants in the USA. Thus, the importance of preventing kids from getting infected, not only for their own safety (although again it is unlikely to harm them!) but for everyone they come into contact with... and those peoples' contacts, and their contacts, ... etc, etc.”
Excellent article, but I would have liked a deeper dive into this comment: "We also now have (when doctors can get them) effective medications for vulnerable people who contract Covid-19."
What are the effective medications and why can't doctors get them? Why wasn't there an Operation Warp Speed for therapeutics? It seems likely to me that we have to figure out a way to live with Covid.
Only you can determine the resemblance. I would never conflate the individual with the identity. I am obviously communicating with an individual who cares enough about the world to contribute perspective with passion. We get what we let, and I am complicit in a tiny way to our current circumstances. But enough 'tinys' sum up to being titanic. I now choose as a boomer to help defuse the bomb before it goes 'boom' and sinks the titanic that we have built. We have a civilization to rebuild, let's get busy. Truck On.
This continual undermining of the public's faith in science lowers us even more toward Third World status. In China, scientific papers, like their news media, are published not for excellent content but for length, are full of egregious errors and lies, and are so unreliable as to be worse than worthless. We in the U.S. are rapidly moving toward the Chinese system, discarding all that made us a great country in favor of a rigid, closed-minded authoritarian system of collective thought. A grimmer end to our great republic could scarcely be imagined.
Not possible. The only reasonable option is lawsuits to recover financial losses. Money (along with the threat of imprisonment) is the only thing that these types understand.
These recommendations are reasonable as alternative strategies, but none of them address the thesis question: how to protect science from COVID politics. COVID did not destroy science; it revealed how corrupt science has become. Better COVID strategies are indeed necessary, but they are likely to be infeasible unless and until politics is removed from science.
I suggest reducing government funding by 90%. That’s what politicized science.
I hope someone will be able to get word back to Dr. Prasad so that he would be able to publicize that it looks like most of the tragic cases of post-vaccination myocarditis would be avoided by correcting the manner in which the injections are done.
It is essential that the mRNA vaccines be delivered into muscle tissue only, and to prevent delivery of the mRNA vaccines into veins.
Proper avoidance of delivery into a vein can be assured only if “aspiration” is performed after the needle is inserted but prior to actually injecting the vaccine.
A comparative study between Norway - which didn’t use the aspiration technique - and Denmark - which uses it - highlighted that Norway had 2.4 times higher rate of myocarditis than Denmark.
Here is a link to a video of Dr John Campbell very clearly explaining the issue: https://youtu.be/nBaIRm4610o
All just "Common Sense" now, right?
I disagree.. Not everything is relative. There sre objective truths. The age at death from Covid exceeded the US life expectancy. It was not a threat to the young. We could have freed them while protecting the old and vulnerable. We did neither. “We” as in mostly progressive Democrat mayors and governors and their drooling acolytes.
I don't agree that the age at death from Covid exceeded US life expectancy. It is not just a threat to old people but also obese people. People were dying at many different ages.
I remember the following concern:
If the young can transmit it to older people and obese, then do we segregate the young from the old? How do we do that in households with children and close contact with older and obese people? How do we do that in educational settings where the teachers have to come in close contact with the children? Do we now have to keep older and obese people in special areas?
We did what we did based on the information we had at the time. As Prasad points out, a lot of it was flawed. We also had constant conflict with the government (this was under a Republican president back then and now under a Democrat president). We don't adapt and change to new information well. Instead we wait too long and point fingers at people who believed the now out-of-date information. We don't have accepted criteria on when to change.
At some point in the future, we won't need masks at all anywhere, and everyone agrees. What are the steps to get to that future point? How do we agree?
It doesn’t matter if you agree. About 899k ppl have died from Covid. Over 462k are over 75. US life expectancy is about 77 years. That’s pretty close. Do the math from the data. You can find it on Statista.
Agree Publius_x. Parents don’t necessarily treat kids equitably. If one needs special attention the rest of the family will sacrifice accordingly. Best advice I got when I created a trust when my children were young and I was thinking in terms of equality vs need.
Someone should send Dr. Vinay's clear-minded and penetrating enlightenment to a certain Canadian prime minister, who's lately been trying to turn Ottawa into Tienneman Square.
Other than the elderly, the other very vulnerable group was the obese. But progressives didn't want to stigmatize the obese and overweight so we all had to be treated as if we were as at risk as people who choose to eat more food than they need.
See this article from the NY Times early on in the pandemic: "Coronavirus Ravages 7 Members of a Single Family, Killing 4"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/new-jersey-family-coronavirus.html
The photo shows a group of people who are all, to use the correct technical term, obese or morbidly obese. But nobody will discuss the elephant in the room.
It would have been great to see if masks really work, but we now have no way of knowing. Few people actually wore masks properly, in a way that medical professionals use them. Early on, if they had trained a group of people who were likely to comply with the use of "splash masks" and N-95 masks, and compared them to a control group, we could have known quickly if they were effective at all. So many opportunities to do controlled experiments to advance public health with little downside were squandered.
Early on in the pandemic, I saw a video of a group of people, few of them experts in anything, deciding who should get the yet-to-be-produced vaccine first. They did this based on who they felt was the most "oppressed" -- not who would benefit most from them. To "ensure equity" in their words.
https://thearcca.org/california-establishes-vaccine-advisory-committee-to-ensure-equity-in-covid-19-vaccine-access/
Like it or not, it may have been that the most 'privileged' among us -- those who travel the most, young people who will gather for spring break no matter what -- who would have been the most optimal group to first receive the vaccine (had it actually helped stop transmission). We'll never know, because nobody was basing these decisions on medical facts.
This is a very well-written, argued, and sourced piece about our Covid response and how we can and should adjust to current and future reality. Thank you, Dr. Prasad.
The political leanings of Mr. Prasad are embarrassingly evident in this shoddy column. Much of his advice is already well understood by most scientists. Do randomized testing! Brilliant! Why didn't any other scientists think of that?
No one is going to get the science and the public policy exactly right on something as complex and ever-changing as a pandemic, but one thing I've learned for certain is that the experts (like the CDC, NIH and Dr. Fauci) are much better at discerning truth from nonsense than right-wing media pundits.
Dennis Prager is a perfect example of what I mean. Prager says that masks don't work. He claims that the vaccines don't work. He claims that HCQ and Ivermectin cure covid, and that the medical establishment is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in America because they don't prescribe these useless drugs. Non of that is based in science. Prager simply pulled it out of his substantial rear end.
Prager also says that he no longer trusts doctors and the medical establishment because "they're all corrupt", without citing a single example of any actual corruption. Few people have done more to undermine our country's response to the pandemic than Dennis Prager, with the possible exception of Robert Kennedy Jr.
No single group has done more to politicize the pandemic than right-wing media. Right-wing media is why we have such a low vaccination rate, and such a high death rate. (Right-wing media is also why so many Americans believe that Trump won the 2020 election, and why we had a violent insurrection committed by a bunch of delusional lunatics.)
Also, simply protecting the vulnerable is much easier said than done because sooner or later they have to come into contact with other people who could be carrying the virus and not even know it. I've yet to see a country successfully protect the vulnerable while allowing everyone else to go about life as normal. Protecting the vulnerable sounds nice, but in practice it doesn't work.
Also, I wonder why Dr Prasad didn't cite Australia, S Korea and New Zealand as examples of successful public policy. Actually, I don't. His politics is clearly obfuscating his ability to think clearly.
All great points, I'll quibble with: "people who have been infected with Covid should only have to get one dose of vaccine, not the three now recommended by the CDC." Nobody should "have to get" ANY dose. Let everyone make the choice for themselves, based on their individual circumstances, which are infinitely varied.
What to do with the comments from presumed “experts”, like that which I received below when questioning school closure and mandates 18 months ago?:
“The bad news is that they do indeed shed the virus even when minimally or asymptomatic, meaning kids are a threat to public health even if they personally are probably safe--and even if their own families are willing to take that risk for themselves. The situation is more complex and compelling than ever, given the appearance of more-communicable variants in the USA. Thus, the importance of preventing kids from getting infected, not only for their own safety (although again it is unlikely to harm them!) but for everyone they come into contact with... and those peoples' contacts, and their contacts, ... etc, etc.”
Excellent article, but I would have liked a deeper dive into this comment: "We also now have (when doctors can get them) effective medications for vulnerable people who contract Covid-19."
What are the effective medications and why can't doctors get them? Why wasn't there an Operation Warp Speed for therapeutics? It seems likely to me that we have to figure out a way to live with Covid.
Only you can determine the resemblance. I would never conflate the individual with the identity. I am obviously communicating with an individual who cares enough about the world to contribute perspective with passion. We get what we let, and I am complicit in a tiny way to our current circumstances. But enough 'tinys' sum up to being titanic. I now choose as a boomer to help defuse the bomb before it goes 'boom' and sinks the titanic that we have built. We have a civilization to rebuild, let's get busy. Truck On.
This continual undermining of the public's faith in science lowers us even more toward Third World status. In China, scientific papers, like their news media, are published not for excellent content but for length, are full of egregious errors and lies, and are so unreliable as to be worse than worthless. We in the U.S. are rapidly moving toward the Chinese system, discarding all that made us a great country in favor of a rigid, closed-minded authoritarian system of collective thought. A grimmer end to our great republic could scarcely be imagined.
Bravo. Now: how to repair relationships with our medical colleagues who were the demonizers when you feel that you were demonized or illegitimized?
Not possible. The only reasonable option is lawsuits to recover financial losses. Money (along with the threat of imprisonment) is the only thing that these types understand.
LATE! :(