I just finished reading an article in Commentary Magazine by Noah Rothman on the worldwide COVID revolts. I recommend it to my readers. To me, it brings back memories of one of Anthony Fauci’s false predictions from late 2020. He prophesied that we might never go back to shaking hands in public because of the eternal fear of contagion. I always thought that such a vision was unhelpful and unlikely. Fauci was and still is focused on the virus(es), their behavior and the threats of the spread of infection within the population. As I have indicated in previous postings, this narrow focus is a huge vulnerability and limitation of any expert who knows so much about his/her area of expertise but has little awareness of broader social, economic and psychological impacts of proposed public policies.
In 2022, the world saw protests, pushback and revolts in many parts of the world. Just in the last week, the prime minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern resigned in the wake of imposing one of the most draconian set of health-inspired restrictions in the world. It worked in the short run but, as in other parts of the world, the people of New Zealand decided that they were not going to “take it anymore”. Her popularity tanked. Our neighbors in Canada remain deeply unhappy about the extent of the health-dependent restraints imposed by Prime Minister Trudeau on their nation. In the United States, the incidence of citizens obeying official recommendations regarding vaccine boosters has reached a new low.
What is going on here? Many American citizens and citizens of the world have decided evidently that the official medical establishments are “out of step” with the reality of the pandemic, which has wound down. Even President Biden has pronounced the pandemic over while his government is at the same time using COVID as an objective indication to continue certain “emergency” rulings, like the suspension of the requirement for student loans to be repaid for several more months. Meanwhile, even the medical profession is ambivalent in practice. While almost all of society is now mask-free, most hospitals and many doctors’ offices are requiring the continued use of marginally effective plain surgical masks for all who enter.
Perhaps, on the world scene, the most instructive of all lessons has come from China. China used its strict authoritarian rule to pinch off the initial emergence of COVID 19 in Wuhan and a few other cities in 2020. However, the arrogance of its success led to the development of a minimally effective vaccine and a less than efficient system of vaccine administration. Even with the emergence of the less virulent omicron variants, the inevitable spread of COVID to China in late 2022 has resulted in a major outbreak of disruptive and lethal infection. The reimposition of “zero COVID policies” led to widespread protests which eventually convinced the government to loosen up.
Where does all this leave us?
COVID is likely to continue to percolate through the world population for years to come with a fascinating and unpredictable ability to mutate into variants, many of which will escape both natural and vaccine-conferred immunity.
Vaccine makers will continue to try to keep up with variants (always months to years behind). With the presumed endorsement of governments and the medical establishments, vaccine manufacturers will try to convince the vulnerable public that the benefits of future vaccines will outweigh the diminishing risks as the key mechanisms of risk are progressively investigated and minimized (presumptively).
Meanwhile, clinical scientists will continue to develop increasingly effective measures to treat COVID and attempt to communicate this option to a population that is not so interested in such breakthroughs.
Informed political leaders will try to adapt to the lessons of 2020-2023 to understand how to protect citizens, avoiding the demonstrably adverse effects of overly zealous lockdowns.
The World Health Organization may or may not reform in reaction to its failings in 2020.
The medical profession in many countries may embrace the opportunity to learn how it lost so much of the respect that it had been afforded in the past. It must refine and reform its leadership and journals to celebrate the importance of science and to admit its errors. It must address and welcome the need for debate within and outside its confines so that responsible alternative views are treated with respect.
Independent physician voices will continue to attempt to rally and educate their highly focused and partially blind colleagues of the need for embracing and celebrating perspectives and notions that contravene prevalent dogmas.