There ain’t no cure for long covidiocy
The pandemic has faded, but one of the least understood effects of the virus still eludes treatment: There is no known cure for long covidiocy.
House Republicans presented with a textbook case of the ailment last week. The newly formed select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic met for the first time for what its chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said would be some “Monday-morning quarterbacking.” It instead became a Tuesday afternoon of false starts and illegal blocks.
Republicans on the panel, some of them medical doctors and others just playing one on TV, offered their predictable assessments. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., kicked off with the unsupported allegation that “COVID was intentionally released” from a Chinese lab because “it would be impossible for the virus to be accidentally leaked.”
Rep. Richard McCormick, R-Ga., advanced the ball by informing the panel that coronavirus booster shots “do more harm than good.”
And then Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., scored with this extraordinary medical discovery: “Researchers found that the vaccinated are at least twice as likely to be infected with COVID as the unvaccinated and those with natural immunity.”
Vaccines make you more likely to get COVID! Thank you, Dr. Jewish Space Lasers.
But the panel’s greatest contribution to the science of misdirection was to feature as witnesses three scientists who arguably did more than all others to champion a herd-immunity approach to COVID. Two of them were co-authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” put out by a Koch-backed group, which argued in 2020 for letting the virus run wild through the population while somehow segregating the old and vulnerable.
Had they prevailed in making herd immunity the official policy, hundreds of thousands more Americans might have died. As it was, President Donald Trump and GOP governors used these scientists’ claims disparaging face masks, isolation and vaccines to whip up resistance to public health restrictions.
One of the witnesses, Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and Fox News regular, used the committee meeting to present a new variant of covidiocy. He declared with absolute certainty that the virus came from a Wuhan lab.
“It’s a no-brainer that it came from a lab,” he declared. What’s more, “at this point it’s impossible to acquire any more information, and if you did it would only be in the affirmative.” He even suggested that two of the nation’s top virologists knew this but “changed their tunes” because they were bribed with grant money by Anthony Fauci.
How’s that for sound science? Some (including, now, the “low confidence” Energy Department) believe the virus came from a lab. Others think it occurred naturally. Nobody knows for sure — except Makary. And he knows with equal certainty that whatever unknown evidence might emerge will back him up.
You didn’t need a peer-reviewed study to predict this sort of nonsense would occur.
Makary is the guy who predicted in late February 2021 that “COVID will be mostly gone by April.” He was also the source of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s dubious claim that face masks cause unhealthy levels of carbon dioxide in children’s blood.
Another witness, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University (also a Fox News regular, on matters medical and nonmedical), had called coronavirus testing “actively harmful” and warned about “great harm” and “danger” from vaccination. He worked on a study that claimed the COVID death rate was similar to the flu’s, and he argued in March 2020 that “there’s little evidence” that “the novel coronavirus would kill millions” if left unchecked.
The three had top-notch academic credentials, and they wore well the professorial-shabby look: One had a hole in his suit-jacket elbow, another slung a parka over his chair and the third wore Hurley athletic socks with his business suit. But when they spoke, their tone was less scholarly sobriety than cable-news combat.
Makary, mocking “King Fauci,” claimed that “the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government.” Bhattacharya repeatedly complained that they had been “censored,” “marginalized” and “slandered” by public health “dictators.” The other witness, Swedish epidemiologist Martin Kulldorf, called covid restrictions “the worst assault” on the poor and middle class “since segregation.”
In the witnesses’ telling, public health officials and scientists were wrong about everything — masks, vaccines, natural immunity, shutdowns — while the dissidents were unerring. Bhattacharya claimed the “harsh countermeasures” against COVID “failed to protect Americans” while ensuring that people “will never trust public health authorities again.”
That’s rich. Far from being marginalized, these critics became right-wing celebrities and were embraced by the Trump administration. Their ideas helped power resistance to masks and vaccines — at the cost of untold lives. Now they’re blaming the debacle on the public health officials whose advice they encouraged Americans to resist.
There is an important debate to be had about the effectiveness of school closures and vaccine mandates. Officials working with limited information made a lot of mistakes. But those seeking honest answers will apparently have to look somewhere other than the select covidiocy committee.