Public health researcher Kevin Bass recently published an article in Newsweek, apologizing for getting it wrong in advocating for lockdowns during the pandemic. https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-scientific-community-admit-we-were-wrong-about-coivd-it-cost-lives-opinion-1776630
The news of a new deadly virus spreading across the world hit us like a punch in the gut in the winter of 2020. It was spreading fast and people were dying. We had little information about what the cause was or what would happen next. It made sense to put things on pause until we could figure out what the heck was going on.
Our health officials were telling us to stay at least six feet apart from others, and to wash down our groceries. We were told to mask up, to not mask up, and yet again to mask up. We were not to travel or go to church, and were prevented from being with our dying loved ones.
And in mid-March, word came down from our federal healthcare officials recommending to the states that they shut down their economies. Just about every state complied, at first. But shortly into the pandemic, we discovered some crucial information. It was targeting primarily older people or those who were significantly overweight or had other underlying healthcare problems.
The more rational among us advised that we isolate the elderly and infirm, yet allow the healthy to go on with their lives while taking commonsense precautions.
But a good chunk of the healthcare establishment — aided by political actors mostly on the left, as well as a Trump-hating media — called for a complete shutdown of the American economy. President Trump, who had both a huge victory with his Operation Warp Speed vaccine development, and major failures, such as his inability to articulate a consistent message or unite the country, did indeed say one prescient thing: Make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease.
Indeed, many healthcare officials, such as the tens of thousands of doctors and scientists who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, stated that shutdowns of our schools and economy could lead to massive poverty, missed diagnoses and psychological damage to both children and adults. It would also lead to an uptick in deaths due to suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse. Children would lose years worth of needed cognitive development.
Unfortunately, their advice was quashed by the liberal media and the agenda-driven Big Tech industry. Those doctors who dared to speak out with this sage advice were ostracized and even labeled as quacks. They feared losing their grants and even their livelihoods.
Some countries like Sweden, and states such as Florida, Texas, and Georgia, chose a better, more commonsense approach, as opposed to shutting schools and locking the economy down. Once the data came in, they were proven to have been right.
And now, Mr. Bass has conceded this. It took a great deal of humility and bravery on his part to do so. It is extremely important that he and others who got it wrong admit to it so that we do not make this mistake again in the future.