Overall, you can break my and Jim’s claims down into a few categories: * Descriptions of things that had already happened, where no new information has overturned our interpretation (5) * CDC made a guess with insufficient information, was correct (1- packages) * CDC made a guess with insufficient information, we’ll never know who was right because the terms were ambiguous (1- the state of post-quarantine individuals) * CDC made a guess with insufficient information and we were right (1- masks)
That overall seems pretty good. It’s great that covid didn’t turn out to be very spreadable via fomites but I think we were right to be cautious at the time and believe the CDC was being motivated by something other than science. History has vindicated our position on masks, far more than I wanted it to.
It’s impossible for me to think about this without thinking about the fight with David Manheim in the comments or the current politicization of public health. It’s hard to recreate my mental state at the time, but I don’t think it occurred to me that public health or politicization thereof would get this bad, which was a real failure of imagination on my part. I keep trying to write out what I thought at the time and I can’t recreate it because everything that happened seems so obvious now. The CDC was prioritizing something other than public health and the president was trying to socially dominate a disease, I was already sold on institutional decay, what did I think was going to happen?
I wish I’d sat down and made some hard predictions, in part because the one time I did, I was dead on. This wasn’t recorded in public, alas, but Linch is my witness. But if I had done more predictions I don’t know what would have changed even if I’d been right. I didn’t have a lot of levers to affect CDC policy or the politicization of vaccines. Maybe if I’d seen it coming in time I would have had time to develop them?
Overall, you can break my and Jim’s claims down into a few categories:
* Descriptions of things that had already happened, where no new information has overturned our interpretation (5)
* CDC made a guess with insufficient information, was correct (1- packages)
* CDC made a guess with insufficient information, we’ll never know who was right because the terms were ambiguous (1- the state of post-quarantine individuals)
* CDC made a guess with insufficient information and we were right (1- masks)
That overall seems pretty good. It’s great that covid didn’t turn out to be very spreadable via fomites but I think we were right to be cautious at the time and believe the CDC was being motivated by something other than science. History has vindicated our position on masks, far more than I wanted it to.
It’s impossible for me to think about this without thinking about the fight with David Manheim in the comments or the current politicization of public health. It’s hard to recreate my mental state at the time, but I don’t think it occurred to me that public health or politicization thereof would get this bad, which was a real failure of imagination on my part. I keep trying to write out what I thought at the time and I can’t recreate it because everything that happened seems so obvious now. The CDC was prioritizing something other than public health and the president was trying to socially dominate a disease, I was already sold on institutional decay, what did I think was going to happen?
I wish I’d sat down and made some hard predictions, in part because the one time I did, I was dead on. This wasn’t recorded in public, alas, but Linch is my witness. But if I had done more predictions I don’t know what would have changed even if I’d been right. I didn’t have a lot of levers to affect CDC policy or the politicization of vaccines. Maybe if I’d seen it coming in time I would have had time to develop them?