Common sense muffled by mixed messages
Two years ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci called for “common sense” in an effort to get Americans to wear not one, but two face masks to slow the spread of COVID.
It was a year into the COVID shutdown and he had the right diagnosis: The country did need 100 cc's of common sense, stat.
But c'mon, Doc. Two masks made as much sense as using leeches to suck out the virus.
I mean, why not three masks? Or four? Or five masks, a face shield, a tin foil hat and a lucky rabbit's foot?
Come to think of it, did we even need to breathe? Breathing, after all, contained the virus and we needed to slow the spread!
Of course this didn't make sense. Looking back for COVID's third birthday, so little of it did. But that's how I'll remember COVID: Full of panic and brow-beating and short on common sense and facts.
I know, I know. Masks covered our faces and that reduced transmission. That's why doctors wear masks on the job, duh. And Fauci, the White House advisor on COVID was recommending it. How's that for facts?
Except Fauci of 2021 disagreed with Fauci of 2020. Fauci20 said store bought masks were “not really effective” and not long after he said there was no reason to walk around with a mask.
That's very different from Fauci21's two-is-better-thanone suggestion.
But it seems as though Fauci20 had it right, before COVID's most debilitating side effect — hysteria — set in. Recently, the Cochrane Library published a definitive study on masking during COVID finding that masking “makes little or no difference.”
Case closed, right? You have Fauci20 saying masking wasn't really effective. You have a top medical research institute agreeing after a review of the pandemic. And you have millions and millions of cases during mandatory masking.
Common sense would say masking wasn't really effective. But a recent New York Times op-ed argued: “Here's Why the Science Is Clear That Masks Work.”
So it goes.
For every person on Facebook letting us know they believe in science, and masks, and vaccines, there were just as many who would corner their friends to have a frank discussion about the “plandemic.”
Neither seemed to be very right, though can you blame either? On one side, you had experts bowing to political pressure to say things they didn't really believe, like two masks makes common sense. On the other, experts were often proven wrong.
We knew it was all a game when leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom were repeatedly caught in public not wearing masks. At the Lakers game or at an exclusive restaurant partying with lobbyists.
Newsom wouldn't push to let your kids go back to school in person. No, no. It was far too dangerous. But his kids went back to school in person.
Any skeptic could tell something was up. But they were just mocked as conspiracy theorists (which was only sometimes true).
It was all too much.
Beach closures
Remember when Newsom closed Orange County beaches for just a few days because people were complaining on Twitter after this paper published a story about how people were on the beach?
Nevermind that the prevailing understanding of COVID both then and now was that it was not very transmissible outdoors and it would retreat in warmer temperatures. Nevermind that Newsom did not appear to do any investigation of his own — he simply relied on panic tweets and a photo in this newspaper as justification to close the beaches for a few days.
I criticized Newsom's lazy policymaking in a column at the time, saying he shouldn't rely on “misleading” pictures. In hindsight, I could have probably used a more precise word, but it was clear from the column I was criticizing Newsom and not the photojournalist.
But that didn't stop some of my colleagues from attacking me for attacking the photojournalist. I repeatedly said I was not attacking the photojournalist, but they were undeterred.
Instead, I was attacked for not “backing up” the newsroom and was lectured about how I should have learned about loyalty on the first day of journalism school, which is of course not anything taught in journalism schools.
My credibility was questioned. There were calls to get rid of the opinion section altogether. I was told my actions were “disgusting.”
But I was right: The photo, a fine piece of photojournalism, was an insufficient donkey rump for which a blindfolded Newsom could pin public policy.
Flattening the cueve
That was COVID — that insufferable era when two weeks actually meant 16 months.
When flattening the curve – initially a strategy to stretch the inevitable COVID caseload so as not to overload hospitals – actually meant to regulate on a whim to satisfy the insatiable demands of society's hypochondriacs.
When shutting down schools turned out to be way worse than leaving them open. When extended isolation and fear had predictably harsh effects on people. When personal autonomy was sacrificed for a common good that apparently failed to materialize.
Even the theory that COVID had escaped from a Chinese lab, which we were told was racist and conspiratorial, has turned out to be probably true.
So where do we go from here?
Many actual experts have a lot of work to do to repair their reputations, while social media experts should probably stick to whatever it is they do best.
And maybe a little bit of personal autonomy is a good thing.