The experts have gotten things wrong. American public-health officials, including the surgeon general, once loudly told us all not to bother wearing masks. It now seems this was a Noble Lie, where they sought to reserve limited supplies for frontline healthcare workers, but why not just be honest about that and tell people to make their own face coverings at home? Yes, the mask culture war is a shitshow now, but back then the whole country had mobilized in the collective sacrifice of lockdown. The experts long emphasized hand-washing, believing the novel coronavirus spread widely on surfaces, and while we should all keep up the soap, it now looks like that kind of surface spread isn’t a major threat. This is the cost of doing business during a rapidly evolving global emergency, one where we did not know—and could not know—much about the virus when it first came on the scene. Perhaps the experts’ biggest failure was not emphasizing how provisional the advice was.
Still, it’s hard to see any source of hope outside the community of experts, as the pandemic once again spirals out of control in the United States. The way out certainly will not be found in our political leadership. The president spent this morning sharing the public-health stylings of Chuck Woolery, the former host of Love Connection, who logged on to spout off some conspiratorial nonsense. Apparently, the president couldn’t have said it better himself. So he retweeted it to his 83 million followers.
Arthur Julien
Article URL : https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/president-trading-dr-fauci-ex-161100327.html