It Could Have Been A Lot Worse

Via Instapundit,

THIS ERA WILL BE LOOKED BACK ON AS ONE OF MASS HYSTERIA AND OFFICIAL INCOMPETENCE: The U.K. Briefly Considered Killing All Pet Cats Early in the Pandemic.

To be fair, that’s only because it was an era of mass hysteria and official incompetence.

Plus: “The revelations have sparked astonishment from some on social media, with users sharing images of their own cats and vowing they would have put up a fight.” Meh. Most of them would have gone along. Many would have bragged about their compliance and shamed those who resisted.

The link is to a story in TIME:

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when little was known about the virus, the U.K. government briefly considered asking the public to exterminate every cat amid fears that the pets could spread the disease.

Lord Bethell, a former deputy Health Minister from 2020 to 2021, revealed the news Wednesday during an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News.

. . . Bethell added in the Channel 4 News interview that there was a moment where evidence suggested there was merit in taking the extraordinary measure but it was investigated and ultimately dismissed.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, animals do not appear to play a significant role in spreading COVID-19 to humans, but cases of animals have been documented and most of them were “infected after contact with people with COVID-19.”

I posted not long ago about the hospital ships sent to New York and Los Angeles that, with the field hospitals that were sent as well, remained mostly empty and unused for weeks until they were quietly recalled. I noted that this was during the early days of the panic, stoked by the Imperial College London model of COVID spread that was almost immediately discredited -- but it nevertheless served as the justification for continued lockdowns, closure of houses of worship, shutdown of businesses, schools, playgrounds, beaches, and the rest, for which the talking heads are only now reluctantly and tardily acknowledging there was never medical justification.

Thus it would have been only a very small step for Dr Fauci to have convinced President Trump that indeed, all cats would need to be euthanized, and Drs Fauci, Birks, and assorted other stooges in lab coats would have stood in a line at his shoulder nodding their heads in agreement. Then for all I know, the cat owners would have complained that dogs weren't included in the extermination order, and after days of public kerfuffle, dogs would have had to be rounded up as well, with Dr Fauci insisting we follow the science.

And Trump would have been on board.

This is one reason I'm skeptical of a Trump reboot. He was the one responsible for ordering the hospital ships and endorsing the national lockdowns, and he didn't utter a peep when "15 days to slow the spread" lasted for months. Someone at some point needs to ask him what he should have done in hindsight, and there's no question that even without the benefit of hindsight, Gov DeSantis maintained a much saner public policy perspective as events unrolled. Trump let himself be bullied by Fauci and Birx, two unlikely figures, and my instinct is that this severely diminished his stature in advance of the 2020 election.