Just How Big A Public Policy Blunder Has COVID Been?

The sociopolitical histories of COVID have yet to be written, and I'm realizing the whole episode is by no means over as we speak. I just got a notice to come in for another booster, while Alameda County in the San Francisco area has reinstated a general indoor mask mandate, which suggests LA County won't be far behind. This won't go away until people make it go away.

Nevertheless, bien pensant opinion is gingerly starting to approach the question of how big a public policy disaster COVID has been. I was out driving Thursday and happend to tune in to the Clay and Buck Show, which is the successor to the late Rush Limbaugh. They had as a guest David Zweig, who writes for The Atlantic. It says something that the powers that be there seemed to think it was OK for him to talk to El Rushbo, or at least the guys in El Rushbo's old tme slot. Here's part of the transcript:

BUCK: David, I want to ask you… So, you write for The Atlantic, and not to make any assumptions but, you know, you have a lot of Democrats and liberals who read your work. So, they may not listen to me. You know, they may not listen to Clay because of what we say on a daily basis and all the rest of it. Could you, like, get together with all the libs, all the Democrats that you know and just be like, “Guys you really have to stop with this mask thing on the planes”? . . .

ZWEIG:. . . human beings are not the same as a lab test. And, unfortunately, what has happened is — not just for masks but for a whole variety of different interventions that the government has imposed on us — that they base them oftentimes on just, you know, on a study of mannequins in the lab or, you know, something you do in a petri dish, you know, relating to, you know, certain effects of the vaccine when you’re looking at antibodies rather than looking at whether people are going to the hospital or not. . .

CLAY: Where will, historically, as you work through on your school analysis — I’m arguing, and I think Buck agrees, this is the [worst] public policy failure since at least Vietnam. All the experts saying, “Hey, we have to shut down schools. We have to ensure that these kids are learning remotely. It’s not safe to do it.” Are you in agreement there — and the reason why I’m asking this question is, everyone basically acknowledges Vietnam was a colossal failure now. The best and brightest got it wrong. Is this going to be a modern-day Vietnam in your mind as people continue to see the impact of shutting down schools and how disastrous it’s been for so many kids?

ZWEIG: Yeah. I’m glad to hear your thoughts on that. I agree a hundred percent, and that’s what prompted me to get involved in this two years ago. . . . So very much so in my mind — and what I am prepared to argue in a very detailed manner — is not only that this was an enormous, catastrophic failure of the United States government and our public health apparatus, but I want to explain why it happened. . . . You know, it’s less about trying to beat people over the head to prove that this was a catastrophe. I think that’s fairly obvious, and there have been some other reports who have done some really great work showing the harms. To me what’s more interesting is, you know, how did this happen? Why did it happen? So, but, to your point about Vietnam, you know, the thing that I’m not certain about is how this is going to be viewed.

The transcropt has a link to an Atlantic article by Zweig from last December, but its tone is much milder, and its scope is somewhat narrower, than even Zweig's implications on the Clay and Buck Show. Zweig is focused on masks in schools, a relatively arcane corner of the whole COVID panic, but he's calling even this "an enormous, catastrophic failure of the United States government and our public health apparatus" and agreeing with the hosts that it's comparable to Viet Nam. And that, recognize, is only in the context of masks in schools. What about shutting down the world economy? Where does that rank?

For instance, just Friday we had a White House economist connecting COVID with the current inflation:

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Boushey stated that “the reason that we see inflation today is because we’re recovering from this historic global pandemic.”

Boushey said, “Well, let me be very clear, you know, the reason that we see inflation today is because we’re recovering from this historic global pandemic. So, the president has outlined a number of steps that he is taking to make sure that we contain inflation. . ."

Ms Boushey gives no specifics on how COVID caused the inflation, but she implies that it was an act of nature or something like that, and the president is taking steps to remedy the situation. I would imagine that an intelligent high school graduate could suggest that the stimulus payments from the US and other governments that were meant to be token compensation for those thrown out of work during the panic were one major factor driving the inflation.

But what about the millions of government and other white-collar workers like teachers who were sent home for months (and in cases like Tesla, at least two years) but were still paid for not showing up? Wasn't that inflationary? I suspect if you pressed Elon Musk, who isn't an economist but seems to know a lot about money, he'd probably acknowledge a connection between "work from home" and his super bad feeling about the economy, since his tweets about those matters last week certainly came in close succession.

And that leaves aside Alex Berenson's continiuing research into COVID vaccines, which in his view are increasingly proving not just ineffective but harmful. For instance, from his recent Substack,

I wonder how many physicians are now no longer encouraging - or even actively discouraging - patients from getting booster shots. Taking a public anti-vaccine stance is risky for physicians. Even filing a VAERS (vaccine adverse events report) submission comes with headaches.

If you are a patient who has seen your doctor’s attitude change, or a nurse who has noticed that your hospital is no longer pressing shots, or most of all a physician who has decided that the Covid vaccines may not be appropriate for your patients, please email me at alexberensonauthor at gmail.com (or protonmail.com if you are concerned about confidentiality).

I've long thought that the basic public policy problem with the Viet Nam war was that it was an abuse of the government's conscription power, something Nixon cured first with a draft lottery in 1969 and then with the elimination of the draft in 1973. We might say that it took five years, from Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for reelection in 1968 to the all-volunteer military in 1973, to correct the Viet Nam blunder. How long will it take to correct COVID?

We haven't even figured out what the problem is at this point. By 1969, less than two years in, Nixon had gotten elected on the basis of his policy position and was on the way to a solution. I think fixing COVID will take a lot longer and have a much bigger impact on the population at large.