By 2020, few Americans had to think about how viruses were spreading or how the human immune system works. The pandemic offered a painful course of conflict. Sometimes, it appeared that science evolved as quickly as the virus itself.
Thus, the New York Times asked experts to review the nightmare. One of the most important public health measures introduced during Covid, which have kept scientifically and proved to be Wrongheaded?
The question is especially important now, because the pandemics that could upgrade American lives are inevitable. A candidate has already appeared: bird flu.
Perhaps the greatest lesson he learned, many experts, is that the recommendations during any pandemic are necessarily based on emerging and incomplete information. But during Covid, federal services often show more confidence in their evaluations than justified.
Next time, scientists said, officials should be more immediate for uncertainties and prepare the public for guidance that can be shifted as the threat is clearer.
Instead of promoting preventive measures as infallible solutions, they should also recognize that no single intervention is perfect – although many endless measures can build a stronghold.
If you go out on a “huge, strong storm, your umbrella is not going to keep you from finding wet,” said Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech expert in airborne.
“You need your umbrella. You need your boots. You need a waterproof pants and jacket. And you would probably try to avoid potholes,” he said.
Vaccines
A victory, but the officials exceeded the benefits in the beginning.
MRNA vaccines were, in a sense, the victims of their own unexpected success in clinical trials in 2020. These results were spectacular: the shots removed from the symptomatic disease caused by the original version of the Coranan with a miraculous percentage.
However, government officials had to walk back their enthusiasm, as Delta’s infections were increased in the summer of 2021. The Americans had said to get amplifiers. Again, again.
Federal health officials should have recognized in the beginning that long -term efficiency was unknown, said Natalie Dean, biostatic at Emory University.
The mistrust of the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines now imposes on other immunerations, including those aimed at childhood diseases such as measles.
“The execution of allegations by the fact that this would prevent all infections was, I think, a little excessive proposal” that eventually undermined public confidence, said Saskia Popescu, an infectious prevention expert at the University of Maryland.
Still, the vaccines saved about 14 million lives just in the first year after their introduction.
Airborne
The surfaces were not the problem. The inner air was.
Disagreements between scientists about how they traveled the crowns of crown had deep consequences for how the Americans had said to protect themselves.
Early, healthcare employees insisted that the virus spread through large droplets that came out or sneezed by an infected person to other people or objects. The theory “Fomite” led to protocols that did not make sense retrospectively.
Remember Plexiglass obstacles during presidential discussions? The facial shields? The schools were closed for days of cleaning in the middle of the week. People were rubbing under the groceries and mail.
“The whole hygiene theater was terribly unfortunate,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. It wasted millions of dollars and gave people a false sense of security.
Health services took months to admit that the virus was transported high from tiny droplets, called aerosols, which could exhale, traveling long distances indoors. Unfortunately, this insight initially led to another excessive reaction.
Some states have closed the beaches and parks and prohibit outdoor interactions, although “there is good scientific evidence that outdoor events are lower dangers,” Dr. Dean said.
Ultimately, the understanding that the virus floats mainly indoors has prompted Biden’s administration to protest for improved ventilation in schools.
Masking
It works if you used the right masks correctly.
As the pandemic spread to the United States, the coverage was transformed by a public health intervention into a cultural point of ignition.
Assuming Koronas traveled like the flu and worried that hospitals may not have enough resources, Heath federal officials initially told the public that no masks needed.
This advice was suddenly reversed when scientists learned that the crown was airborne. However, officials initially recommended fabric masks – which are not very effective in maintaining airborne viruses – and did not support more N95 protective respiles until January 2022, long after most of the audience stop using fabric masks.
Dozens of studies have shown that when used properly and consistently, N95 masks or equivalents can prevent infected people from spreading the virus and protecting the dresses from contributing.
Unfortunately, several incorrect studies and personal freedom policy have created a cultural war that surrounds the use of masks, especially by children, said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health.
In the event of another respiratory epidemic, “I feel quite anxious that an entire constituency has already rejected the masks,” he said.
Children in Asia usually wear masks, especially during the seasons of respiratory virus and allergy, some experts occurred.
“I wish we could involve more prevention of infections in particular elementary schools during the respiratory era,” Dr. Popescu said. “It looked like a great way to get kids back to schools.”
Immunity
A chimera. We never got there.
For nearly two years after the start of the pandemic, experts talked about achieving the immunity of herds once from the population had gained protection either with the sick or the vaccinated.
That was a mistake, the experts said. The immunity of the herds are only possible if immunity is sterilized – which means it prevents repetitions – and lifelong. The immunity to most viruses is not either.
Seasonal coronies are changing quick enough for people to undergo repeated infections throughout their lives, said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, who insisted early on that the new coronaur could also cause re -emergence.
As soon as the vaccines arrived, officials first presented the shots as a way to remain safe from the virus forever, and not as a means to reduce the severity of infections.
“There have been a lot of confusion and misconceptions about the immunity of the herds – that the toothpaste returned to the tube somehow,” Dr. Dean said.
School closure
Necessary at first. Questionable with the passage of time.
Few aspects of the pandemic cause so much the closure of schools. In many parts of the country, test scores have never been recovered and the absence has become an unbearable problem.
However, experts said it was the right decision to close schools in the spring of 2020, when a poorly understandable pathogen was scanning across the country. Ideally, schools would have reopened the fall, but with measures – improved ventilation, tests, masks – to mitigate the dangers.
“And of course, we really didn’t have any of these things,” Dr. Hanage said.
By the beginning of autumn in 2020, it was clear that students did not significantly lead the transmission of the community. Still, many schools have remained closed for months more than they needed, forcing children to confuse through remote learning and causing some to fall irrevocably.
“It’s really difficult for Monday-Sunday General,” Dr. Shaman said.
“We don’t have the opposite. This alternative scenario to see how he really would play.”
If the influenza of birds turns into a pandemic, it would be silly to base school policies on how the crown behaved, he and others warned. Other respiratory viruses, such as flu, tend to be more deadly among young children and older adults.
“We have every reason to believe that a future influenza pandemic would be much more dangerous for young people than Covid,” Dr. Hanage said. “I think we need to talk about what we can do to mitigate the transmission in schools.”
Lock
They slow down the virus, but the price was high.
The pandemic destroyed local businesses, sent the unemployment rates that were increasing and the increased debt of households. Many people now feel that the locks have accused much of the damage – and that their damage exceeds the benefits.
Many scientists see it differently. “The economy was closed only with the pure power of the pandemic,” said Dr. Osterholm.
No policy of the US state approached the rigor of those in China, India, Italy or Jordan – where people were not able to leave the house at all – and much of the labor and social activities continued because they were considered necessary, he noted.
By the end of May 2020, the internal dining rooms and religious services had been repeated in much of the country if they had ceased at all, although many cities continued to establish temporary bans as the levels of the virus increased and fell.
The finishes may have been non -popular in part because they were introduced without a clear explanation or ending to the look.
Instead, said Dr. Osterholm, health officials could have introduced a concept of “snow day”. People stayed home when the hospitals were overwhelmed, as they do when the roads were snowing down, but their behavior returned to normal when the situation relaxed.
The finishes destroyed the weight in hospitals and slowed the transmission of the virus, buying time to develop a vaccine. Studies from many other countries have also shown that orders and restrictions on home stay and restrictions on mass concentrations were the most effective measures to limit the transmission of the virus to communities.
“Whatever people did in 2020, before the peoples were embedded, millions of lives saved,” Dr. Hanage said. “If we hadn’t done anything, he did nothing at all. Things would be much, much worse.”
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