[peter422]

> Virtually nothing about our response was based on science or data.

Virtually nothing?

So the thousands and thousands of studies on vaccines, treatments, mask policies, vaccine policies, school policies, air filtration techniques, etc, etc… those were just done for no reason?

To say we live in an imperfect society with imperfect leaders and imperfect citizens is a fair point. Incorrect decisions were and continue to be made for political reasons or religious reasons or whatever else. That’s what happens in an imperfect society. To say “virtually nothing” about the response is based on data is just ridiculous.

Again, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists make up a world where decisions are made in secret for suspicious reasons when generally all the data and arguments are out in the open and are just ignored.

[spookthesunset]

> anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists

Are all the highly esteemed professors, scientists, politicians, healthcare workers, and researchers who signed the great barrington declaration anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists?

Do you have any idea how many people in real life yelled at me and called me incredibly nasty things for suggesting that maybe, just maybe this myopic fixation on Covid was going to have some serious long term effects and maybe, just maybe we are overreacting?

You can’t speak against the narrative. Speaking out against what we did was and still is career suicide if you are in healthcare, science or research.

There has been a continual incredibly strong push to label anything that goes against “the narrative” as misinformation, “anti-whatever”. Speaking out as a member of the medical/science community gets you blacklisted. Beware of any research that got published in the heat of this mess—there were strong incentives to only publish research that supported “the narrative”.

[peter422]

There is a huge difference between saying we made a lot of mistakes in the response to covid and saying “virtually nothing” was based on data.

I don’t support people being shut down as you talk about, however you should also appreciate that a ton of people speaking out against the “narrative” were just grifters spreading misinformation for whatever random reason. A lot of the blame for legitimate dissent being ignored is due to the fact that most dissenting views were actively in bad faith.