Coronavirus Week 133: No nuance from the People's CDC or their fellow travelers

I blogged three-plus weeks ago about this organization and some of its over-the-top claims. I now want to expand on updates I posted at the bottom of that piece.

The "no nuance" comes from STAT taling about lessons from COVID so far. One is how public health measures have both been imposed, and to some degree, opposed, without nuance either way. Something else the People's  CDC could take to heart — but probably won't. It also notes the rapid dropoff of mRNA effectiveness, something which, as noted above, the People's CDC and fellow travelers don't discuss, at least not from what I could tell browsing their website.

In that piece, re the one big issue above, Nancy Messionier notes there's still no accepted definition of Long COVID. That's one of many science-tentative issues around COVID, she says.

This:

“I’ve been sort of repeatedly surprised by how often I see statements in the press attributable to scientists that have an unwarranted level of confidence associated with them,” [Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at Rockefeller University] said, suggesting this has contributed to a decline in trust in science and in public health experts over the course of the pandemic. 

Bieniasz thinks scientists should have started most statements with “I don’t know, but my best guess is …”

Is big. But, again, the People's CDC half of twosiderism won't be listening. Nor will many of the science experts who may not be twosiderists but are unwittingly fueling the problem.

And with that, let's move to People's CDC fellow traveler (yes, deliberate) Gregg Gonsalves. A few days after the New Yorker piece by Emma Green that "triggered" (yes) the People's CDC, he fired back. with a piece that's as much a hit piece if not more than Green's original. He has no substantive engagement with Green on Long COVID and other issues.

The piece has other strawmanning. No, we don't have a memorial to COVID dead, unlike 9/11. And? As I wrote in a newspaper column 20 years ago, we also don't have a memorial to dead diabetics and other things. It's sad that he considers that to be serious argument. (And, re COVID minimalists and deniers, public health remains sad on things like diabetes and doing yet more to encourage — and assist — better dietary habits.)

And, there's the question of how much the People's CDC and fellow travelers like Gonsalves have a "zero COVID" mindset. Gonsalves links to a Nature piece from November that recommends governments around the world continue to look beyond just vaccines, suggesting things like mask mandates. It includes this statement:

(N)one of us is safe until everyone is safe.

Sounds close to "zero COVID" for me.

Finally, Gregg? Show your homework. Worldometers doesn't show 4,000 US dead in the past week. Even a full week of 500-death days (which we don't have) would be 3,500.

Speaking of Worldometers, before I get to just the US numbers? Italy's fatality rate (much of it from the early days) is 90 percent that of the US. So is the UK. Much of central and eastern Europe is higher to much higher. (Orban's Hungary is 50 percent higher.) None of this is to excuse any deliberate bad decisions in some of these other countries any more than in the US.

As for Gonsalves bemoaning that death counts are the same as since last summer? The flip side of that is there's been no new surges. We're back to where we were before Omicron.

And, those numbers?

In the US? Worldometers shows we're back down to under 2,000 deaths in the last week. About like a bad flu year. Tis true that the flu is more seasonal, and without a summertime peak. 

Back up to the pull quote from the Nature piece? We don't have mask mandates for the flu.

That said? A Dutch immunologist says there's a bunch of clear evidence COVID is moving in the direction of seasonal waves.

And, back to those 2,000 deaths a week.

Leana Wen, a professor of public health like Gonsalves, and one of the experts mentioned in Green's story, wonders if we're not overcounting COVID deaths and talks about deaths "from" vs deaths "with." And, she actually interviews two people, which is two more than Gonsalves. Both the people she interviewed are infectious disease physicians. Both have themselves been attacked as COVID minimalists, as has Wen. (Actual COVID minimalists and deniers have tried to co-opt her.)

Wen has the advantage of having been, pre-COVID, on the ground lines of public health as the city of Baltimore's health commissioner, too.

She may be right 100 percent. She may be wrong 100 percent. She may be more wrong than right, or more right than wrong. I'm pretty sure she's not 100 percent wrong, and pretty sure she has the professional chops to know how she's framing the conversation.

I get the feeling that the People's CDC and fellow travelers are afraid to go down her road for fear of being sucked into twosiderism, in part. It's a fear somewhat akin to an AA member thinking that trying other outlets for sobriety support will doom them. I said this in my post three weeks ago. I said it in the past when calling out Walker Bragman and others for not talking about why we don't have non-mRNA boosters.

Related issue? Zeynep Tufekci tells you what Walker Bragman and the People's CDC won't — RSV and flu cases have both sharply dropped again after their initial surge. I suspect two years of masking and isolation lessened natural immunity, which is a thing, even if misinterpreted by the denialists and minimalists. (And, she's been attacked on Twitter herself.) 

So, Gregg Gonsalves, Emma Green has a degree of rightness on that issue. (I'm not a big enough Twitter fish to get attacked myself.)

In addition to her? Former Pro Publica editorial top cheese Dick Tofel also suggests it's time to move from pandemic to endemic, in terms of journalism coverage, and how we should get beyond twosiderism:

The answer seems not to be to pretend that COVID has disappeared, but rather to integrate what we have learned these last three years into public life, urging (and making it feasible) for those who are ill to stay home, taking special precautions around those at highest risk, varying our own behavior at times and in places where illnesses are more prevalent, acknowledging that those who choose to avoid or delay available vaccines are assuming risks for which they must bear at least some of the consequences.

Sounds pretty sensical.