robhunter
Here in Ontario, the McKinsey-driven "Science Table" frequently referenced hospital capacity in their reports, but their modelling often ended up being off by orders of magnitude.
While I concur that preventable deaths are unfortunate, I don't think there's evidence to suggest that most - all? - of the restrictions put in place had any noticeable impact on preventable deaths from Covid.
If anything, those restrictions very much enabled other deaths - from mental health challenges, isolation, depression, substance abuse, delayed medical screening - that very much were preventable.
While we don't have a full picture yet, it's telling that excess mortality remains heavily elevated even though most of the population has had Covid and been vaccinated.
I don’t particularly love Trump either, but it would also be nice to be able to listen to an NPR podcast without hearing about him on a regular basis.
Having transparent, open, equity-based discussions about costs & benefits
Frequent, honest, humble admitting of mistakes
To your broader point - I think skepticism about the efficacy of the Covid vaccine is a very different (and rapidly evolving) thing than traditional anti-vaxx rhetoric.
If you don't think public trust has declined - why did fewer than 50% of people who got 2 doses go on to get a booster? What changed for them?
It's likely the vaccines reduced the spread of the virus temporarily, but it certainly wasn't very long-lasting. The efficacy waned quickly, even against the original strains/Alpha/Delta - take a look at case rates in Israel (first heavily vaccinated country) through mid-late 2021 (before Omicron).
For instance, 5-11 year olds were up to 15% at about the same period of time after the vaccines were made available to that age group - https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/an-upda...
15% vs. 2% is a pretty substantial drop in just ~6 months, no?
I think the booster rate is a reasonable sign that trust in "the science" has been lost - why do you think such a large % of people who initially "followed the science" (and got 2 doses) chose not to "follow the science" and get a booster? (Again, keeping in mind boosters have been widely available since late 2021)
- Only about 2% of kids under 5 have had a 1st dose since they were introduced nearly a month ago
- Only 30% of the 5-11 year old population has had 2 doses
- < 50% of people w/2 doses went on to get a booster
So much damage has been done to public trust - "You will not get Covid if you get the vaccine; the vaccine eliminates the spread of the disease; the vaccine is more effective than natural immunity; healthy 18 year old males need a booster to go to school" - that I think it will be a real uphill climb to get more buy-in, even if the actual underlying product is more effective.
I think we need a better definition.
Can't outsource this or even hire for it in the early days
Has to be the founders
While vaccines should be available to any 5-11 year old child whose parents want them, the idea that they help in keeping schools open doesn't seem at all logical.
No masking of young children. Minimal masking of older children, or teachers. No quadmesters. No banning of assemblies, or proms, or extra curriculars.
Your guess is not grounded in the data we are seeing from dozens of other countries.
They masked 6+ year olds and did not mask anyone under 6 in school.
You'd expect higher rates of Covid in the 5 year olds than the 6 year olds.
In fact, it was the exact opposite - rate of spread was perfectly correlated with age. Masks showed no impact.
There's also interesting data from North Dakota (https://twitter.com/TracyBethHoeg/status/1470072066380419072).
This is a great dataset because it controls for a lot of variables - it's two school districts in the same county; one optional and one mandatory. The mandatory masking county consistently has had higher rates of Covid.