The Mask Debacle

"15 days to slow the spread." Remember that?

Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson chronicle the "experts" and "the science" over the last two years in the article The Mask Debacle in the latest Tablet. A lot of experts, right and left, got things wrong and trust has been the casualty, along with nearly 1,000,000 deaths as the Covid 19 Coronavirus continues its march in America. And the mask debacle carries on.

According to Russell and Patterson:

"Some say it is unfair to criticize public health for the messaging flip-flops – whether about cloth masks, herd immunity, natural immunity, or the vaccines' effects on transmissibility – because they were just 'following the science' as it changed. But in many cases, what evolved was politics, not science. The critics of public health messaging do not begrudge scientific progress – indeed, most of them want more research. Rather, people are upset by the unjustified dogmatic certainty in one direction, followed by an immediate swoop to utter confidence in the opposite course of action. The pandemic produced a headfirst leap into a series of unprecedented interventions, from masks to lockdowns to school closures. In the first weeks of the pandemic, speed was necessary, and mistakes were inevitable. What was not necessary or inevitable was the suppression of healthy skepticism and discussion."

Will The New York Times update its May 24, 2020 front-page story as America approaches the mid-term elections?